


Only Waking When I Sleep

by unrealitycheck



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Bisexual Richie Tozier, F/M, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mike’s parents are alive and well, Mr. Hanlon’s not like a regular dad he’s a cool dad, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sonia Kaspbrak’s A+ parenting, dreamshare, teenage boys who are very confused, the Losers are literally a dream team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23148730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrealitycheck/pseuds/unrealitycheck
Summary: Eddie studied his surroundings again, taking in the beautiful green field in a daze. He was dreaming.Dreaming. His mom couldn’t catch him here. She would never find him and he was free freefree.Inception AU.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 15
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title is from “The State of Dreaming” by Marina. 
> 
> 2\. This story uses the same technology from the movie _Inception_. However, it does not follow the plot of the movie or get super technical, so it should be pretty easy to follow. 
> 
> 3\. For anyone who needs a refresher or is not familiar with the term, PASIV stands for “Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous” device, a.k.a. that silver briefcase thing that hooks you up to the dreamworld in _Inception_.

_July 1989_

Unlike the rest of his friends, Eddie had never experienced dreamshare. Mainly because he was _sane_ and had no desire to get rushed to the ER and die a few hours later of blood poisoning.

You had to use _needles_ in order to dreamshare. Non-sterile, potentially dirty needles that had been who-knew-where, and you got injected with this completely sketchy dream drug called Somnacin (probably loaded with toxins) that put you to sleep and let you enter the dreams of anyone else who'd gotten the needle-treatment.

Bill had told him over and over that the procedure was perfectly safe, that _no one's ever d-d-died, Eddie; it's been tested a m-million times!_ but the statistics were rising when it came to needle-related emergencies. The rest of his friends could shoot up dream juice as much as they liked. Eddie would lick a doorknob (his worst fucking nightmare) before _he_ stuck some weird needle in his vein that allowed him to partake in shared hallucinations.

This didn't stop him from getting curious, though.

It was hard sometimes to watch his friends take their dirty needles and hook themselves into the PASIV device so they could all dream together. Even Stan, who lost his shit if his shoes got muddy, didn't bat an eye when the needle slid through his skin and pumped amber liquid into his veins. Eddie would watch Stan and Bill and all the rest of them close their eyes one by one, their breaths softening into sleep as the drug took hold, and vanish mentally into a world where Eddie couldn't follow.

 _Wouldn't_ follow, but only for his own good. Under ordinary circumstances, Eddie had no fear of needles. His mother carted him off to the hospital with such regularity, Eddie considered the place his home away from home, and he'd been jabbed with enough shots to create a patchwork of pinpricks up and down his arms. But those were from a _doctor's_ needles. _Nurse's_ needles. Sterilized and handled by professionals. His mom would shit industrial-sized bricks if she even _suspected_ her delicate Eddie had been playing with strange needles in Bill Denbrough's garage.

He could hear her in his head every time he dared to approach the PASIV. _You get away from there, Eddie! Needles carry blood. BLOOD CARRIES AIDS!_ And his curiosity about dreamshare would immediately withdraw, like a turtle pulling deep into its shell. He would glance over the vials of

_(poison)_

Somnacin and shudder.

It helped him to keep watch on his friends. They were toxic too, according to his mother, but that was one precaution Eddie managed to ignore. His friends always sat in a circle in the Denbrough garage, dead to the waking world while marvelous fantasies _(like plowing your mom_ , Richie once told him) took shape in their minds. The way Beverly told it, Ben was a master architect. He could create labyrinths and skyscrapers and mountain ranges and bring them beautifully to life with his mind. The urge to see these things grew tempting at times, but common sense overcame it. Better for Eddie to stay Outside, in the waking world, and watch over his friends as they dreamed.

He always focused on Bill first.

Bill sat reclined in a folding chair, lips pressed into a thin line. The dreaming sessions never lasted long to Eddie. Five minutes in the real world was equal to an hour in the dream world, but even during the longer sessions, Bill never seemed fully relaxed. He clenched

_(thrust)_

his fists against his chair, as if straining to hold something back. If Eddie had to take a guess, he would say Bill slept like a boy haunted by nightmares. They all talked about Bill when their leader's back was turned. Eddie overhead Mike and Stan muttering together once, saying _Bill's getting worse_. His stutter, maybe? But that wasn't likely. Bill supposedly never stuttered in the dream world and showed no signs of worsening in the real world.

Since Eddie only had the vaguest idea of what went on behind his friends' closed eyelids, he could only speculate and watch the worry lines stand out on Bill's slumbering face.

He moved down the circle of lawn chairs, observing Beverly, who always slept next to Bill, and Ben, who always slept next to Beverly. He couldn't detect any strain in either of their faces. Stan, as usual, reclined with his hands folded neatly over his chest, like the world's politest Egyptian mummy. Mike preferred to sit with his hands resting behind his head, as if he was outdoors in the grass watching clouds drift by.

Eddie always came to Richie last.

Richie, in stark contrast to Stan, sat sprawled in his seat with his legs apart. (Eddie would _not_ be surprised to catch him drooling one of these days.) Richie had kept his glasses on and wore a Beastie Boys T-shirt that slowly rose and fell with each breath. He was the very image of someone who had been sleeping for two hours instead of two minutes and Eddie would never admit this out loud, but he liked watching Richie sleep the most. He seemed so weirdly, uncharacteristically _nice_ in these moments.

Most people—often parents and teachers—always seemed to think that Richie put too much effort into drawing attention to himself, but Eddie didn't buy it. He got the sense that Richie was trying to draw attention _away_ from himself instead. Like all the jokes and Voices and swearing were an elaborate distraction to keep people from looking at him too closely. But in sleep, Richie's guard was always down. He was simply _Richie_ , without all his masks.

Eddie liked watching him sleep the most because he always hoped that one of these days, if Eddie looked hard enough, he could finally figure Richie out.

Richie's slack expression twitched a bit, as if something interesting was happening in whatever dreamscape he was in, and Eddie's attention flickered to the needle that connected Richie to the PASIV. Surely it couldn't hurt to find a spare needle and join in just once, just for a quick peek—

 _And catch God-only-knows-how-many toxins lurking in that STRANGE drug, Eddie?_ his mother bellowed inside his head. _It isn't NATURAL to share dreams with people, anyway. The moment you let another person touch your mind, you're just asking to catch a mental disorder!_

Mental disorders weren't contagious, of course. Eddie _knew_ this. Or thought he knew. _Could_ you catch someone's insanity if you shared your subconscious with them? If that was the case, then all his friends would be as fucking crazy as Richie.

His eyes went back to Bill, who slept with such a troubled face, and his throat began to tighten. Oh, God. What nightmares did _Bill_ suffer from? Could _those_ be passed on to another dreamer? Could—

 _Beep! Beep! Beep!_ sang the watch on Eddie's wrist, startling him so badly, he almost fell on his ass. Medication time, right on schedule.

Unlike Richie, who chose that moment to suddenly open his eyes, nearly three and a half minutes _ahead_ of schedule while the others remained sleeping.

"Fuck," said Richie, staring around the garage with a dazed expression. He gazed down at his hands, like he had never seen them before. "Guess I'm alive."

Eddie's throat felt tight again. His fingers rested on the zipper of his fanny pack. "What happened?"

"It was Stan. He shot me in the fucking face!"

"Wait, what? Are you okay?"

"I _guess_ ,"said Richie, sitting up all the way on his lawn chair. "It was pretty fucked up, though. Stan got Ben to build this huge birdhouse for him. I mean, it was really huge, like almost as big as your mom's ass! And I tried to paint some flames on the walls so it wouldn't look so boring, but I guess I dreamed up real fire by mistake and the whole thing burned down. So then Stan dreamed up a fucking _gun_ and pulled the trigger on me!"

Eddie remembered that there was more than one way to get pulled out of the dreamworld. Getting killed was one of them. He kept his hand on his fanny pack, trying not to picture bullets flying right at his face, biting into flesh, shattering bones—

Oh, God.

Eddie sank onto the

_(dirty dirty so fucking dirty)_

garage floor and fumbled for his inhaler. A couple of quick puffs sent the imaginary bullets away.

Richie sat up straighter, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"Shit, Eddie. What the hell's wrong with _you?_ "

Eddie scrambled to his feet and brushed dust off his knees, then swapped his inhaler for hand sanitizer.

"Nothing," said Eddie. "Just my asthma acting up! I'm fine!"

Richie grinned. "Then hurry up and find me a marker. I want to draw a dick on Stan's face before he wakes up!"

*

Dreamshare started with Bill, like things often did.

Bill's parents had been two of the most skilled dreamers in New England. With the power of their subconscious, they built cities and gave life to the impossible. They were mainly researchers who strove to experiment within the dreamworld, but with two young boys to support, they couldn't ignore the more lucrative aspects of dreamshare.

Every now and then, Mr. and Mrs. Denbrough were approached by clients willing to pay for an "extraction." Bill always pictured his parents diving into people's heads and pulling out bad teeth, like dentists, but that couldn't be right. His father would never explain to him what an extraction was, exactly, so Bill started eavesdropping when he was supposed to keep Georgie occupied.

Clients didn't come to the house requesting his parents to pull teeth. They wanted his parents to pull _information_.

If you were a skilled enough dreamer, you could break into someone's mind and steal their secrets. Bill supposed it wasn't legal, since theft was theft—subconscious or otherwise—which was why his father never answered his questions about dreamshare. Bill always expected to hear the full story when he was older. That was the game grownups always played with children. _You'll find out when you're older_ , they would tease, and Bill just _assumed_ his time would eventually come.

Until they lost Georgie.

He'd been playing out in the streets on a rainy day, chasing a paper boat Bill made for him. The streets were slick and the air was gray, and Georgie never saw the car coming when he reached for his boat. The car never saw Georgie until it was too late. After that, Bill's parents never wanted to create beautiful worlds again. They boxed up their PASIV device and stuck it in the basement, and the Denbrough house steadily grew colder. Bill knew he may never learn the story of extraction from his father, no matter how much older he grew.

As the months became colder in that house (despite a rise in outdoor temperatures), Bill decided he couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't take the growing distance between himself and his parents. Couldn't take the _silence_. On the first day of summer vacation, while his parents were at work, he crept down to the basement and removed the PASIV from its dusty box.

His first dreams were shaky. Unstable worlds full of muted colors, but with practice the landscapes got brighter. The buildings stabilized and the roads stretched on into eternity.

He didn't stutter.

And for the first time in months, Bill felt like the ice in the air was beginning to thaw. He couldn't make his parents talk to him—make them _love_ him again—but at least he could _escape._

He was the only one in his group of friends whose parents owned a PASIV. They weren't common in Derry, though not unheard of, and one by one he lured his friends to the basement to share his dreams. All except for Eddie, who acted like the device carried ten different kinds of plague.

"B-B-Ben will be our architect," Bill decided, after discovering Ben's knack for designing dreamscapes. "Every g-good team has an architect."

He wasn't sure what type of team they were, exactly, but he wanted to be _something_. Wanted to fill the giant crater that Georgie had left behind.

After a couple weeks of dreaming, Bill caught his first glimpse of a yellow rain jacket from the corner of his eye, but didn't tell anyone.

(They would find out for themselves soon enough.)

*

"Wow, Eddie, you're just like your mom! You can't get enough of me, can you?"

Another day in the garage. Another day of Eddie alone on the Outside, counting down the minutes while his friends built worlds without him. And unfortunately for Eddie, it was another day of Richie awakening before the time was up.

Eddie jerked away from Richie's chair. "Can't get enough of you?" said Eddie, trying to ignore how his lungs were trying to cave in on themselves. "You wish!"

Richie slid the needle from his arm and casually let the IV tube dangle over the side of his chair. " _You_ were the one practically breathing right on me."

"Yeah, and I almost gagged!" Eddie shot back. "Do you ever shower?"

"Only when your mom comes over."

Eddie nearly shot back another retort ( _My mom would wash your mouth out with soap if she could hear this shit!_ ), but he kept it to himself, knowing it would only bait Richie into more mom jokes. He didn't think he could get the words out anyway. Eddie's heart was pounding so hard, he was sure his friends could hear it all the way in the dreamworld. He shouldn't have been standing so _close_ to Richie's chair.

He shouldn't have been watching Richie at all.

"Why are you awake, anyway?" Eddie demanded. "Did you piss off Stan again?”

"Beverly this time," said Richie. "Turns out you can't say shit about Bill without her pulling a fucking trigger."

Eddie's eyes went to Bill, who slept with the same old strain on his face. The nightmare strain, Eddie privately called it. Eddie knew next-to-nothing about dreamshare, but he knew plenty about nightmares.

"What did Bill do?"

Richie also looked at Bill. His breath came out in a sigh. "Bill has been... not the same as when we first started dreaming. You'd have to _be_ there to really get it, Eds. You wouldn't understand."

"Don't call me Eds. And don't treat me like I'm stupid, either. If something's wrong with Bill, I want to know what it is!"

"Fine! We were all standing in the middle of this street, okay? It took Ben forever to build it. And just when he put the last streetlamp into place, it started raining. And then this huge fucking boat came out of nowhere and tore right through the middle of the street."

"What's that have to do with Bill?"

"The boat was steel," said Richie. His eyes were unusually wide behind his glasses. "But it looked like a paper boat. Just like the one Georgie had right before he bit it."

Eddie frowned. "So Bill dreams about stuff that reminds him of Georgie?"

"Not exactly. I told you, you have to actually _be_ there." Richie slid out of his chair and checked the timer on the PASIV. "Holy shit, we've still got a few minutes. I wonder if Bev has any smokes."

"Don't think about lighting up in here, asshole!" said Eddie. "I've got asthma, remember?"

Beverly _did_ have cigarettes on her. Richie grabbed the whole pack from the pocket of her shorts and brought it back to his lawn chair. "So what? You're not the one smoking."

"Uh, have you ever heard of _second-hand smoke?_ I can too get sick and I will if you light up in here! Every cigarette you smoke puts you and everyone around you in danger of lung cancer, throat cancer, mouth cancer, heart disease, bronchitis, stroke, high blood pressure—"

"Jeez, Eddie, you're giving _me_ high blood pressure."

The timer on the PASIV ran out before Eddie could think of a comeback. Stan woke first. He immediately reached for the compact mirror Beverly lent him, constantly afraid that Richie would draw something on his face again. Bill woke last. No one seemed willing to meet Bill's eyes, Beverly included. Eddie thought Bill seemed older, somehow, after this latest dream session. More haunted

_(sees the ghosts)_

than ever before, and Eddie suddenly wished he could tune into a TV station that would _show_ him the dreamworld so he'd quit being in the dark.

 _You have to actually be there_ , Richie insisted, and he was probably right. Eddie _should_ see it for himself, but Bill and Beverly and Ben and Stan and Mike were all pulling their needles out, one by one by one, and he swore if he saw _one_ more needle he'd get sick all over Bill's dirty garage floor.

A horrible idea came to Eddie: what if _Bill_ was sick? Not physically, but in his mind, in his _dreams_? What if it was contagious?

_Shit shit shit—_

"Eddie!"

Suddenly Bill was _right there_ , kneeling next to Eddie because Eddie was on the fucking floor, gasping for breath. Bill unzipped Eddie's fanny pack and pushed his inhaler into his hands. _Bill_ , who might be sick in his dreams, might be spreading his infection to everyone's minds—

"B-b- _breathe_ , Eddie!"

Eddie breathed.

Six concerned faces stared at him. He always felt like such a freak in these moments. Everyone watching him like he might shatter or burst into flames.

Like he wasn't normal.

"Breathe," Bill repeated, and suddenly he was their Leader again, someone to follow rather than fear.

The tightness in Eddie's throat loosened. Everyone quit staring and began chatting among themselves. Except Richie, who kept staring like Eddie was a puzzle he wanted to solve.

"What?" Eddie asked him, a little snappishly.

Richie looked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the very first IT fanfic I ever attempted to write. I started it during the summer as a writing exercise to overcome my writer’s block, which ended up being very effective! It has taken me months to start posting this thing because it was in desperate need of editing, and I am the world’s laziest editor. 
> 
> But at last, here is the first chapter! More to come soon.


	2. Chapter 2

_August 1989_

When they weren't plugged into the PASIV device, Ben and Mike spent long hours in the library. Mike had become the unofficial researcher of the group, and with Ben's help he made do with the modest collections of dream research Derry had to offer. One time the two of them spent a long, hot day biking all the way to Bangor, whose collection was much more extensive, and returned home with their notebooks overflowing. Most of the research made little sense to Ben. Before moving to Derry, he never knew anyone who'd been involved with dreamshare. But Mike's dad had been in the army. During training, Mr. Hanlon entered imaginary battlefields and shot at dream enemies that screamed and bled as vividly as the real thing.

"That's how dreamshare got started, you know,” Mike explained to Ben during their bike ride to Bangor. "As a military training program."

But Ben didn't like to think of dream soldiers getting shot up, even if they were only projections. Ben just wanted to _build_. The walls of his bedroom were covered in sketches, some of them based on buildings Ben saw on TV or the streets of Derry or on the road when his mom took him to visit relatives. Some were purely from Ben's imagination, rooted in fantastic landscapes of every color.

All of them were for Beverly.

He tried to create the things she loved. If Beverly mentioned how she'd like to live in a castle, Ben dreamed it for her. If she flipped through a fashion magazine and sighed over how _cool_ it would be to visit Paris, Ben dreamed it for her. He noted down all the things that pleased her: certain colors and shapes and atmospheres. He watched the way her eyes glowed when the light hit them just right. When he dreamed, he grew autumn leaves in the shade of her hair and roses in the color of her lips. He only crafted beauty, because Beverly was beautiful, and it was enough for him (no matter how she looked at Bill) to see her delight in the worlds he created.

A week before the Boat Incident, the two of them were alone in Ben's room, sketching dream ideas while New Kids on the Block blasted from his boombox, and Beverly confessed how much she loved the movie _Labyrinth_. Ben rented the video after she left and planned out a dream maze, complete with a projection of David Bowie at the center.

He called her up the next day and suggested they head to Bill's to dreamshare together. Beverly showed up at his house ten minutes late, eyes sparkling with tears she'd been furiously holding back.

 _Let's get away from here, Ben_ , she had said, grabbing his hand. _Away from the_ real _world._

He took her to Bill's and gently slid the needle through the soft skin of her wrist, talking to her all the while, telling her all about his latest blueprints until her eyes fluttered closed and her lips went still. He could have kissed her then, but Bill was there, and Ben didn't think he'd have the nerve to do it anyway.

So he settled for giving Beverly a pleasant dream. For helping her _escape_. The three of them ran through the labyrinth Ben created, Beverly grasping each boy by the hand until it almost felt like they were blurring into one entity that could only exist within the beauty of dreams.

When they reached the labyrinth's center, Ben conjured up a projection of David Bowie as the Goblin King, and Beverly got into character by shouting, _You have no power over me!_ just like Sarah in the _Labyrinth_ movie. But then Beverly fell to her knees, eyes sparkling wet all over again, and pulled Ben and Bill close to her. _I love you both_ , she whispered, and Ben suspected it wasn't the face of the Goblin King she had seen at all. He took one of Beverly's hands again and Bill took the other, while Beverly cried away all the demons that wore her father's face.

She wasn't the only one with demons. They all knew what lurked in the corners of Bill's subconscious. Ben had caught _glimpses_ every time it started raining in one of his dreamscapes. Stan, whose eyes were the sharpest, had seen more than that. He'd gotten a clear look at _who_ kept trying to intrude on Bill's mind.

Which led to Ben and Mike at the Derry library, flipping through all their notes, trying to find _something_ that could help.

"This could get dangerous," said Mike, three different notebooks spread out in front of him. "If we try to help Bill inside the dreamworld, his subconscious might see it as a threat. If his subconscious thinks there's a threat, his projections will attack us. Beverly's a damn good shot, but even _she_ can't hold off a whole crowd of projections."

"So we can't try anything while Bill's the subject of the dream," said Ben. "Someone else will have to be the subject. It'll be harder to get through to Bill that way."

"But safer for the rest of us."

"Yeah," Ben agreed softly, though his heart deflated like a dying balloon at the thought of Bill—their trusted leader—turning dangerous.

_(but you saw the boat ben you saw that boat ripping right into the street)_

"I think I might have something," Mike spoke up a few minutes later. "I don't know if it can fix Bill, but it might help _all_ of us."

He showed Ben his notes on totems.

A totem was a small, usually inconsequential object that anchored a dreamer to reality. Your totem assured you of whether you were dreaming or awake. It especially came in handy as protection against extractors, who used trickery to get inside their victim's heads and steal their secrets. Extractors were known to sedate their chosen targets, usually by drugging their drinks, then hooked them into the PASIV and took them into a dream that mimicked reality. An unwary victim could be coerced into giving up information without even suspecting they'd been pulled into a dream. But the dreamer who kept a totem in his pocket could always tell if he was in reality. He could check if he was in someone else's dream and therefore guard his mind.

Ben met Mike's eyes across the wide library table.

"I think it's worth a shot."

*

They brought their idea to Bill, hoping he'd know what would make a good totem. Ben had some silver dollars he didn't mind sharing, but Mike didn't think those would work well enough. They each needed an object that was unique. Something they couldn't easily misplace.

 _We didn't have totems when dreamshare began_ , his dad explained, when Mike brought it up after dinner. _Nobody was trying to steal anything in those days. Nobody gave a damn what secrets were in your head, just as long as you could shoot straight._

 _Did you ever have nightmares?_ Mike asked, choosing his words with care. _While using dreamshare, I mean?_

 _Ain't no one in that whole army who didn't have nightmares, son_ , Mr. Hanlon replied. _Both the sleeping and the waking kind. Sometimes the two become blurred—and I guess that's where a totem would've come in handy._

When Ben and Mike approached Bill, they were careful to conceal their true purpose for wanting totems. Mike thought Bill looked tired. They found him in his garage with the door rolled up to let the sunshine in, making minor repairs on Silver. Bill's hand slipped on his wrench and he fumbled out his frustration, while Ben offered to hold the bike steady for him.

"Th-thanks," said Bill, but even though he smiled, the expression seemed hollow. In the glow of August sunshine, Mike caught a look on Bill's face that chilled him. It was a look he recognized.

Mike had seen it on his father's face now and then, when a certain noise or a careless word reminded him of Vietnam. _Your daddy's a brave man,_ his mother told him when Mike was little, when it seemed like his father had gone someplace far away inside his mind. _But all brave men pay a price._

Bill had that same look to him. Like he had blasted his way through a battlefield and came back to tell the tale, but left part of himself behind. And he seemed so goddamned _tired_.

"I know what we'll d-d-do," Bill said, once Silver had been repaired to his satisfaction. "We'll each take a q-quarter and go to the grocery store. Th-th-they have those little vending machines with the t-toys inside them."

The ones that came in the clear plastic eggs. Mike used to always pester his mom for a quarter when she took him shopping with her. As a child he accumulated a whole shoebox full of little plastic toys—mostly junk—and either lost the plastic shells under his bed or had to throw them out when they got caught beneath someone's shoe.

"Whatever t-t-toy you get is your totem," Bill continued. "No swapping."

It sounded fair to Mike. It sounded _right_ somehow.

"I'll call Beverly," Ben offered. "And the others," he quickly added. He disappeared into the house to use the Denbroughs' phone.

One by one the rest of their group arrived on their bikes. Mike pulled out his notebook and explained that the deeper they got into dreamshare, the more important it was for them to know the difference between dreams and reality. The seven of them took off for the grocery store, Bill in the lead. Mike hoped Bill would _always_ be in the lead. There were times when he wished they had never started dreamsharing, that they should stop the whole thing before it went too far. But he suspected Bill spent a lot of time dreaming alone, without the rest of them to see what grew in his mind, and that worried Mike most of all. He supposed they _had_ to keep dreamsharing, at least for Bill's sake.

When they found the vending machines in the grocery store and lined themselves up, quarters in hand, Mike sensed an unusual solemnity in the air. Like they were about to perform some kind of ritual. Even Richie wasn't mouthing off for once.

Bill went first. The vending slot swallowed his quarter and a little plastic egg tumbled out. They watched in silent awe as Bill cracked open his shell and removed the little plastic toy it held captive. It was junk, of course. Just a little plastic turtle—garishly green—with a rubbery head, but Bill smiled in satisfaction and slipped it into the pocket of his flannel.

Beverly got a tiny squirt gun. For Ben, a miniature globe of the earth. Everyone grinned when Richie opened his egg and found a little green alien with enormous black eyes.

"I always knew you were a Martian," Stan joked. Moments later he got a bright red cardinal with its wings outstretched.

Mike got a mini magnifying glass. When he raised the tiny lens to his eye, it worked just as well as the full-size version.

Eddie hung back, watching the rest of them, shifting his quarter between his fingers. He started to slip it into his fanny pack, then thought better of it _(My mom says that money carries more germs than a public toilet!_ Mike could practically hear him thinking) and shoved the coin into his pocket where it couldn't touch his inhaler.

"Don't," said Mike.

"What's it matter?" said Eddie. "I don't dreamshare."

"But you could," said Bill. "Haven't you ever th-th-thought about it, Eddie? You can build things in the dreamworld; all kinds of th-things. You can _escape._ "

"No!" Eddie burst out, perhaps too quickly. "No, I haven't! And I won't! How do you know this dream shit is safe? It sounds crazy, Bill—fucking _crazy—_ like, _acid trip_ crazy!"

Shoppers were starting to stare. Eddie, looking close to tears, reached for his fanny pack. Richie was suddenly at his side and found his inhaler first.

"Way to go, dickheads!" said Richie, holding the inhaler up to Eddie's mouth. "If he doesn't want to dreamshare, then leave him the fuck alone."

"I'm s-s-sorry, Eddie," said Bill.

"We'll really be sorry if we get kicked out," said Beverly. "We better go."

A man in an apron was striding in their direction, probably to see what the commotion was about. The kids all fled. They gathered around their bikes, which were mostly sprawled all over the pavement—except for Stan's, with its kickstand meticulously in place. Richie had taken hold of Eddie's arm when they ran outside. Mike saw the strangest look cross his face, like a lightning bolt of panic. Richie dropped Eddie's arm so fast, Mike half-wondered if he _had_ been struck by lightning.

Eddie didn't seem to notice anything. He was still breathing hard, gasping for an inhaler he didn't have, since Richie was still holding it. Wordlessly, Richie gave it back to him.

"I'm the one who should be sorry," said Eddie, once he got his breath back. "I almost got us in trouble over something stupid. The whole _thing_ is stupid. We'll probably all head back to Bill's place and the rest of you guys will shoot up your dream drugs and hallucinate together, while I'm on the outside hoping none of you gets blood poisoning, and I hate it, you know? I really fucking hate it sometimes."

For once, Eddie's voice remained calm. His breathing stayed even. All his previous hysteria had melted away, leaving behind a lonely boy who struggled to face the unknown. Bill stuttered out reassurances, with Ben, Beverly, and Stan backing him up. Richie began to reach out, as if to touch Eddie again, then jerked his hand back.

Mike was the one who approached Eddie, the way he approached skittish animals on the farm. Eddie reminded him of a colt without its mother; small and uncertain, ready to bolt at the slightest hint of trouble.

"Eddie," Mike said softly. "You could at least get your totem, so that all of us have one. Even if you never dreamshare, we're all in this together."

"He's r-r-right, Eddie," Bill added. "We w- _want_ you to be part of this. W-we're a team."

A team. Yes, that was what they were. Sometimes dreamshare was nothing more than a game, just a creative outlet for bored children, but somehow it was also more than that. It had become irrevocably part of them.

Part of Eddie, too, despite him staying on the sidelines watching over them. It was part of Eddie too.

Eddie seemed to understand this. "All right," he said, giving in at last. "I'll go back in." His eyes met Mike's. "Will you go with me?"

Mike nodded. Once again, he noticed something strange from Richie. He was staring at Mike with suspicion written all over his face—that was the best way Mike could describe it—like Mike had _done_ something unthinkable. But then the moment passed and suddenly Richie was pulling his little alien out of his pocket, teasing Beverly with it.

Mike put it out of his mind and followed Eddie back into the store.

"You're pretty much a walking library when it comes to dreamshare, right?" Eddie asked Mike.

"I try to be. There's still a lot I don't know. My dad's been able to tell me some things, but he hasn't dreamshared since the early days, and only as a training course. If I could interview Bill's parents, we'd _really_ learn a lot."

But approaching Bill's parents was entirely out of the question. If they suspected their thirteen-year-old son was dreamsharing, they would take away the PASIV forever.

"You _do_ know plenty, though," Eddie persisted. They had reached the vending machines again. He pulled his quarter from his pocket and stared at it, caressing the countless little ridges along the edge. "Do you think I could borrow your notes sometime?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll bring 'em over tomorrow."

Eddie didn't smile. He pressed his lips into a tight line, nodded once, and stepped toward the nearest coin slot. With a sharp click, the machine swallowed his coin and spat out a plastic egg. Eddie cupped the egg in his hand, refusing to peek at the toy until he and Mike were back outside with the rest of their friends.

Eddie's totem turned out to be a little T-Rex, baring sharp rows of tiny plastic teeth.

For a piece of random junk, it seemed strangely appropriate.


	3. Chapter 3

_October 1989_

With the end of summer came the end of their freedom to dreamshare. The seven of them still gathered together, whenever they could, but they had to be more careful than ever. With Bill's parents at work during the long summer days, there was little fear of discovery. Now with school taking up everyone's time, dreamshare happened mainly on evenings and weekends, and only when no parents were home. Bill started rotating their dream sessions from house to house, depending on whose parents had gone out to dinner or out of town. Eddie still played lookout, with extra vigilance.

He still didn't dreamshare.

Eddie carried his totem in his pocket on a daily basis, like the others did. It reassured him sometimes, when he got nervous in class, to reach down and feel the rough plastic body of his T-Rex.

He read the notes Mike had compiled and asked questions about dreamshare's history. He even went to the Hanlon farm for dinner once and listened to Mike's dad tell stories about the dream training he went through in the army.

"Your dad seems fine," he later told Mike, hardly able to believe that someone who spent _months_ carrying a dream weapon, firing relentlessly at dream targets, could possibly be healthy.

"As fine as you can be after fighting a war," said Mike. "He's got his scars, Eddie. Some you can't see, but I'm pretty sure they're all from Vietnam. I don't think dreaming left a mark on him."

But still Eddie didn't dreamshare.

He came so close, sometimes, to telling Bill he'd had enough. That he was sick of watching from the outside and wanted to join in. It was a feeling he'd known his whole life. From his earliest childhood, he'd sat on the edge, watching other kids run around and play games and do all the things he couldn't, because he was always too weak, too sick, too _delicate_. He would sit in a classroom while the other kids had P.E., gazing out the window at boys playing baseball in their gym shorts, thinking how easy it would be to run down to the dugout

_(eddie no you'll break your neck)_

and grab a bat. How easy it would be to swing that bat at an upcoming ball

_(but your asthma eddie you'll trigger your asthma)_

and watch it soar across the baseball field. But in the end, he stayed right at his desk where his doctor's note said he belonged. He watched the other kids score points and told himself it was better this way. Better to listen to his mother, who took good care of him and always knew best.

He heard her in his mind more frequently—and more loudly—each time he went near the PASIV device. One time he actually imagined himself hooked into the PASIV, eyes closed while Somnacin pumped through his veins, but the image was quickly spoiled when he pictured his mother rolling in like a tank, shouting at Bill and the others. Snatching the needle from Eddie's arm and gathering him up in her suffocating arms, shrieking, _Don't you ever do that again, Eddie, don't you ever do that again, don't you EVER._

And he would retreat, as usual, and resume his silent watch over his friends. It got harder for him to do that as well. October was not a good month for Bill. A whole year had passed since he lost Georgie and it showed in his face, especially when he dreamed. And then there was Richie, who never stayed asleep as long as he was supposed to. He would often wake early and complain about getting shot out of the dream, but he never seemed very upset about it. Eddie was glad for the companionship. Richie would tell him about the latest dreamscape Ben had created and it almost made up for the emptiness Eddie felt when his friends dreamed without him.

He supposed today would follow a similar pattern. Richie's parents had gone out to the movies together, so Bill brought the PASIV to Richie's house so they could experiment with something called Forgery. It had come up in some research Mike and Ben were doing at school that week. One of their teachers had a brother who was a forger. He took people into his dreams, then morphed into various celebrities and characters for a fee. Kids came out of his dreamworld in ecstasy, claiming they had _actually_ met Batman.

Bill knew about forgery from the work his parents once did. Extractors often worked with forgers as part of their con. A good forger could mimic a person's appearance and mannerisms to lure the victim into a false sense of trust. All it took was the appearance of a dear friend or family member to get people to spill information for the extractor to use.

Naturally Richie wanted to try it, thinking he could bring his Voices to life. Eddie was free that Saturday, along with Bill and Stan, but Eddie didn't mind having a small group. He liked it when it was just the four of them, the way it had been for years before Ben, Beverly, and Mike showed up. More secure, somehow. He couldn't hear his mother's voice when he met Bill on the Toziers' front lawn, the PASIV carefully strapped (and covered with a blanket) to the back of Silver.

"Our f-faithful lookout," Bill remarked, fondly clapping Eddie on the back.

And whenever Eddie began to have doubts about attending these dream gatherings, Bill always reminded him why he was here. They were a team and Eddie would follow Bill no matter what, at least while they were awake.

Bill carried the PASIV, contained within its gleaming silver briefcase, to the nightmare that was Richie's bedroom.

Richie seemed determined to fulfill every stereotype of what a messy teenage boy's room should look like. The place was an absolute landfill of schoolbooks, cassette tapes, snack bags, and stray Hawaiian shirts. The mess was mostly intentional, in order to hide the cigarettes, beer, and Playboys he kept strategically stashed away. His mom was always too overwhelmed by the mess to actually touch anything, enabling Richie to hide whatever he wanted in plain sight.

"God, Richie, do you ever pick up in here?" Stan asked, recoiling in disbelief the moment he walked through the door.

"Your mom does when she comes over," said Richie.

"I swear one of these days I'm going to bring a bulldozer through here."

"At least wait 'til I'm done with your mom, Stan! You might run her over!"

Bill ignored Stan and Richie's playful bickering. He was focused on the PASIV. The silver briefcase lay propped open on Richie's bed and Bill busied himself with the device, preparing the needles and vials of amber-colored Somnacin. Eddie stood at a safe distance and watched him. It was better than looking at the back of Richie's door, where the poster of some actress (he couldn't remember who) in a bikini kept staring at him. (Was she the girl from that _Fast Times_ movie? Maybe that's who it was. Whatever her name was.)

"We'll d-do an hour to st-st-start with," Bill decided. He stopped fiddling with the PASIV and glanced over the chaos that surrounded him. "R-Richie, could you _try_ to clean up a little? There's no pl-pl-pl—fucking _place_ to sit."

"Fine," Richie sighed. "Don't touch anything."

Too late. Stan picked up a magazine—one of the girlie mags full of pictures like the poster on Richie's door—and something fluttered out from between the pages.

It was a photograph.

The sight of it made Eddie feel like he'd been punched right in the lungs.

"How did Eddie end up in your dirty magazine, Richie?" Stan asked.

Richie snatched up the picture and shoved it under his bed, where it was immediately swallowed up by clutter. "I was using it as a bookmark! Probably the closest Eds will ever get to having tits in his face—beside his mother's."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Eddie demanded.

(And why did it feel like his asthma was acting up?)

"No offense, Eddie, but you're probably going to be a virgin 'til you're forty."

"Yeah, well I bet you've never been to third base either. You just want us to think you have!"

"He has a point, Richie," said Stan, who had neatly closed the magazine and laid it on top of Richie's desk. "Name _one_ girl you've actually gone all the way with."

"G-g- _guys_ ," said Bill. Despite the stutter, they all immediately stopped like guilty children and turned to listen. Bill was holding one of the PASIV's needles in his hand, for one thing. It glinted wickedly sharp in the dull October light. "I'll p-p-poke one of you if you don't shut up. Now are we g-going to dream or not? Richie, quit fucking around and clean up."

Richie didn't argue and shoved aside enough of his stuff so that half the floor was visible. No more photographs appeared. Eddie still felt kind of sick, like he might need his inhaler soon, and unzipped his fanny pack while Bill prepared the needles. Eddie looked away

_(aids eddie blood carries aids)_

and found himself facing the bikini-clad girl on the door. He didn't think she was as pretty as Beverly.

When the time came for the dreaming to begin, Richie took the bed, while Bill and Stan reclined on the floor. They decided Stan would be the architect in Ben's absence. Bill tried one last time to convince Richie to be the subject—an argument that had been going on for weeks—but Richie refused. It occurred to Eddie that Richie _always_ refused to be the subject of their shared dreams. _You dickwads couldn't handle my subconscious_ , Richie once said, which was probably true, but still pretty weird.

What did Richie have to hide?

The moment his friends were asleep, Eddie crouched on the floor and fished under the bed, searching, _searching_ until his fingers closed around a flat square object. Breathing hard with the exertion

_(you have delicate lungs eddie)_

he brought the photograph into the light and found his own face smiling back at him. The picture had been taken in the summer, out by the quarry where they all liked to swim. Ben had brought his new Polaroid one day and snapped photos of everyone and everything, including one of Eddie sitting on a boulder beneath a tree, his inhaler nowhere in sight.

He sure as hell needed it now.

His asthma always seemed to act up at the strangest times, when he wasn't even _moving_ very much. No wonder his mother wanted him to be so careful. This latest attack was a bad one. Eddie sat gasping on the floor, the photo clutched in one hand and his inhaler in the other. Some outside force seemed to have settled into his lungs, choking him, making his vision go dizzy. Outside Richie's window, the clouds shifted completely in front of the sun, and it was like his mother's shadow had cast itself over everything. He didn't hear her voice in his head for once. He only had the sickening realization that the photograph in his hand signified something Bad.

_How did Eddie end up in your dirty magazine, Richie?_

He flung the picture away from himself, shoving it back under the bed. Back where it belonged, in the dark.

Richie probably _was_ just using it as a bookmark. He had to have been. Probably got interrupted by his mom or dad and grabbed the first flat object he could get his hands on. He probably had plenty of pictures of all his friends scattered around the disaster zone of his bedroom, and just happened to grab one of Eddie.

Eddie realized that in the dizzying moments of his asthma attack, he almost sat right on Stan stretched out on the floor. He rose to his feet, breath coming easier now, and let his gaze fall on Richie. As usual, Richie had somehow gotten into an entirely restless position in a very short amount of time. He had rolled over onto his side with one arm dangling hazardously over the edge of the bed. Eddie was tempted to grab his arm and put it back where it belonged, but his mother's shadow convinced him this would take things from Bad to Worse.

The time was almost up, anyway.

He spent the remaining half-minute settling his gaze on something safe instead. Once more he studied the poster on the back of Richie's door. The actress wore a red bikini, dark hair dripping wet. He still didn't think she was as pretty as Beverly, who he loved like a sister, but he guessed he should at least feel _something_ at the sight of her one-dimensional body.

_(the closest you'll ever come to having tits in your face isn't it eddie ISN'T IT)_

The timer on the PASIV ran out and Richie suddenly jerked awake, nearly toppling off the bed. It was the first time in weeks that he hadn't woken early. Stan pulled himself neatly into a sitting position and shot a concerned glance at Bill, who woke with a gasp.

"How'd it go?" asked Eddie.

"Great," Stan said a little too quickly.

"Really fucking great," said Richie.

"You always call boats she," Bill muttered, sitting up in a daze. He spoke like a boy in a trance, but then the moment passed. He rubbed his eyes and told Stan, in his normal voice, "W-we need to make notes for M-M-Mike's records. You brought your notebook?"

Stan produced a pocket-sized notepad and pen. He perched at Richie's cluttered desk, taking notes while Bill put away the PASIV materials and stuttered out instructions. Richie roped Eddie into taking a trip with him to the kitchen for some snacks.

For some reason that Eddie couldn't explain, he had the sudden fear that his asthma would flare up as he followed Richie down the hallway. Were his lungs really so delicate that a simple walk could aggravate them?

But maybe the dread that had settled over his chest wasn't an impending attack. It felt more like the shadow of his mother had returned, trying to warn him about something Bad again.

He suddenly wished he wasn't alone with Richie.

"What kind of world did Stan build?" Eddie burst out, desperate to fill the space between himself and Richie, which felt strangely suffocating as the two of them reached the kitchen.

"Exactly what you would expect," said Richie. "Boring as fuck. _Birds_ everywhere, like that fucking Hitchcock movie."

He pulled a bag of chips out of the cupboard and tossed it to Eddie, who instinctively caught it. Eddie wondered, as he always did in moments like these, if catching a baseball was just as easy.

"Then how come _you_ weren't the architect?" Eddie asked.

Richie opened the fridge, his glasses threatening to slide off his face as he rummaged around. "Yeah, right. Do you really think Bill and Stan would let _me_ be the architect? They're terrified I'll build some kind of R-rated fantasy world."

Eddie couldn't help grinning. "Would you?"

Richie found the Cokes he was looking for and slammed the fridge shut. "Fuck yes! Strip clubs on every corner and no one would card us."

The smile slipped off Eddie's face. _Do you ever think about anything besides fucking girls?_ he almost demanded, but then a tiny voice murmured, _Maybe he does_ and the question got caught in Eddie's throat. He nearly dropped the bag of chips.

He thought they would take the snacks straight to Richie's room, but Richie flung himself into a chair and popped one of the Cokes open. He took several gulps before realizing Eddie was still hovering in the middle of the kitchen, clutching the unopened Ruffles to his chest.

Richie pushed a second Coke can across the kitchen table. "Drink up, Eds."

Eddie shook his head. "I shouldn't. It's carburated."

"Carburated? What the hell's that?"

"It's the bubbles in the soda. My mom says drinking too many bubbles can give you cancer."

"I'd love to know what your mom is smoking."

"She knows more about health stuff than _you_ do!"

Richie shrugged and gulped more of his Coke. "Like I give a fuck. I'm going to get cancer anyway, according to you."

"According to _doctors_ , dickhead! Cigarettes _do_ give you cancer!"

"So does your mom."

The bickering took a weight off Eddie's shoulders. _This_ was familiar ground. He and Richie traded some more barbs back and forth, until Eddie gave in and joined him at the table. According to Richie, Bill and Stan were probably so absorbed in their incredibly boring notes that they wouldn't even notice they'd been left all alone. It gave Richie the opportunity to fill Eddie in on everything he'd missed in their dream session. He described Stan's architecture, which was all straight lines and neat rows, with nothing but bird parks and birdbaths and fucking bird statues. He told Eddie about forgery, which, in Richie's words, was almost as good as an orgasm. Forgery was an art form. You didn't just imitate another person; you _became_ that person and adopted their mannerisms and speech patterns.

When all of Eddie's friends tried to explain dreamshare to him, they always mentioned _escape_ in some way. Forgery seemed to be Richie's.

"How was Bill?" Eddie finally asked. It was the one topic Richie had avoided. "He seemed kind of weird when he woke up."

Richie ran his hands through his hair. He seemed on the verge of banging his head against the table.

"Bill's losing his shit," he said quietly. "Maybe because it's October—I don't know—but today he _really_ started to lose it."

Eddie realized he was holding his breath. He stared without blinking into Richie's eyes, which seemed darker than usual. "What happened?"

"It started raining. At first Stan was annoyed because it chased all his birds away, but then Bill started crying. Like, actually sobbing and everything. It was pretty fucked up. I tried to distract him by forging Beverly. I think I got her all wrong, since she wasn't actually there for me to copy, but it seemed to work until it was time to wake up."

"Why do you guys keep dreamsharing if it's fucking up Bill?" Eddie demanded. "He's been _different_ for months now! Why don't you just quit?"

"The rest of us could quit, Eddie. Sure. But _Bill_ won't. He'll keep doing it behind our backs, and if we aren't there to dream with him, he might do something _really_ fucked up."

"Like _what?_ It's only dreaming, right? Dreams aren't real."

"These aren't like regular dreams. You have control over them—or at least you're supposed to. But with Bill, things just seem to... come out of nowhere. Like the time that giant boat showed up and wrecked Ben's dreamscape. If you'd give up your stupid fear of needles already, I could show you what I'm talking about."

"I'm not afraid of needles. I don't like _dirty_ needles."

"Then wash them off!"

Eddie guessed he _could_ sterilize the needles. That would make them seem more doctor-ish, at least. But there was still the voice of his mother haunting his every move. If only he had disinfectant that would work on _her_.

"What if it still isn't safe?" Eddie asked.

"People have been doing this shit for years," said Richie. "There's _research_ out there. Anyway, I would never ask you to do something if I thought it would put you in any danger, Eddie." He drew back and quickly added, "I mean, where the fuck would all of us be if we didn't have you telling us about germs and shit?"

He threw a potato chip at Eddie for good measure. Eddie threw one back and they got so absorbed in launching missiles at each other that Eddie was completely distracted, until Bill showed up and wanted to know (in his best imitation of an irate dad) why they were fucking around and wasting perfectly good snacks.

It saved Eddie the trouble of deciding whether he was ready to dreamshare.

*

His mother, in the end, who made the decision for him.

Later that night, Eddie sat in his living room flicking through TV channels while his mom made dinner. A baseball movie caught his eye. It was called _Eight Men Out_ and told the story of the fixed 1919 World Series. Eddie didn't understand a whole lot of the plot, but he understood the game. He liked watching John Cusack catching pitches in his old-fashioned baseball uniform. Liked hearing the _crack!_ of a bat connecting with the ball in just the right way. The movie cut to a commercial break and Eddie began to think.

His school's P.E. class would start their baseball unit in early spring, and Eddie would be stuck indoors as usual. But surely he couldn't exert himself _that_ much if he was an outfielder. He could stand way out in the far end of the field, where he wouldn't see much action aside from the occasional ball that _might_ make a home run if his glove didn't catch it first.

He could wear padding. A helmet. So what if the other boys laughed at him? They did that anyway. He could get a new doctor's note saying he was allowed to join the game, as long as he stayed in the outfield and didn't run much.

Eddie's breath came faster, but not in the tight, dizzying way that signified an asthma attack. His eyes were bright as his mom announced that dinner was ready.

Some of that brightness dimmed when it came time to actually _sit_ across from his mom at the table. Sonia Kaspbrak loomed over her plate like an impassable mountain. She asked Eddie about his grades and urged him to drink more milk to build up his delicate bones.

Eddie picked at his food. It always seemed the same. Usually some kind of meat (a boy his size needed the protein) with lots of vegetables (which were _so_ good for him) and a big frothy glass of milk. For dessert he would have an apple or an orange (there were strictly _no_ snacks in the Kaspbrak household) along with a colorful assortment of vitamins that looked like candy but tasted like chalk.

And if he didn't speak up, he would retire to his room to do homework, maybe look at a comic book or two, then go to bed for a healthy eight hours of sleep.

Eddie took a long, fortifying gulp of milk and spoke up.

He barely even mentioned the word _baseball_ when his mom exploded like the Kitchener Ironworks. Eddie half-expected his head to blow off and land in the neighbor's tree from the sheer force of her anger.

"I _knew_ you've been running with the wrong crowd," said Sonia. She seemed to have gotten larger in the last sixty seconds. "Those awful boys! Did they put this idea into your head?"

" _What?_ No! Nobody did, mommy! I'm just tired of sitting on the sidelines while everyone else has fun—"

"You're not _like_ everyone else, Eddie. You might think you can stand out there in the brutal elements, waiting for some vicious ball to come pelting out of nowhere, but you don't have the _strength_."

"How do you know if I've never even tried?"

"Oh, Eddie!" Sonia's words were half-rage, half-pity. "You know what all your doctors say. Baseball is far too dangerous a sport for a delicate boy. You might get carried away and _run_ yourself half to death or get pummeled by the bigger boys and _then_ where will you be? You'll be in the hospital!"

Like that was anything new. All he had to do was sneeze and his mother was hauling him off to the hospital.

The longer Sonia talked, the more Eddie had the urge to throw a tantrum, maybe spill his milk all over the table like a fucking baby.

"I just want to be included!" he yelled, feeling the old familiar asthma take hold of him, rearing its head at the worst possible time. "Is that so hard to understand? I want to play with the other kids and it's bullshit how I always have to act like I'm going to _break_ if I try to do anything that normal kids do!"

Sonia didn't scold him for his outburst. Instead she pulled out the biggest guns in her arsenal: she started to cry. Big ugly tears plopped right onto her half-eaten pot roast, while she wailed about how cruel Eddie was for even _thinking_ of putting himself at risk. What in the world would she _do_ if anything happened to her sweet boy? She'd be left all _alone_ , that's what! How could he ever doubt that she only wanted what was best for him? She wasn't a monster, for crying out loud. She only wanted to keep him _safe!_

And like clockwork, Eddie started crying too.

He sat there sobbing and wheezing, refusing to use his inhaler because it would only convince his mom how fucking _delicate_ he was. She had won the battle—he _knew_ she had won and was already swearing he would never mention baseball to her again—but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of watching him get sick. Eddie excused himself from the table and fled to his room, stumbling down the hall with his vision blurred by tears. The moment he slammed his door shut, his inhaler was in his mouth, medicine shooting rapidly down his throat while his heart pounded and his eyes burned.

He was stupid, daring to even _hope_ that his mom would listen to him. She never let him go on field trips or eat cafeteria food or pet people's dogs. Once, when Eddie was in first grade, she got into a screaming match with the school nurse after he fell off the monkey bars and scraped his knees. It was a fucking _miracle_ she actually let him ride a bike. Probably because the only alternative was him walking everywhere, which would undoubtedly lead to him collapsing or some shit because his poor little legs could only take him _so_ far. And Eddie had never really questioned any of it. His mother knew what was best for him. Mothers were _supposed_ to know that stuff. But tonight's confrontation had simply been too much. She wouldn't even _listen_ to him.

Weren't mothers supposed to listen?

Predictably, his mom came in without knocking—she never, _ever_ did—after Eddie had cried himself out. She insisted on taking a washcloth to his face and gently scrubbed the tear tracks she had created, then smothered Eddie in her suffocating embrace and chanted, _Don't you ever upset me like that again, don't you ever do it again, don't you ever!_

And within the thick circle of his mother's arms, Eddie thought to himself, _This is what it's like to be imprisoned_.

The thought frightened him. He banished it as quickly as it came and gulped down the unfinished glass of milk his mother brought him. He took his vitamins like he was supposed to and did his homework and brushed his teeth, but as soon as he climbed into bed he felt the walls of his room grow smaller, like they were trying to press against him. Trying to shut him in.

That little traitorous thought whispered in his mind again.

He had to get out of that

_(prison)_

house before it drove him insane.

When Eddie was a child, his mother took him to the library on weekends so he could listen to story time. The children's librarian usually told fables and fairy tales and nursery rhymes—nothing but babyish stuff, really—but Eddie caught a sense of horror from some of those innocent-sounding tales. One story in particular never failed to spook him: the tale of Rapunzel, who was stolen as an infant by a witch and kept at the top of a tall tower. All the little girls at story time were always so enthralled when Rapunzel let down her hair so the prince could climb up to her tower, but Eddie found the story sickening. It filled him with dread to imagine Rapunzel trapped for all those years, imprisoned by the witch that served as a mother figure.

 _Just like me_ , he thought desperately. _I'll rot in this prison forever if I don't escape._

And it occurred to him, finally, what Richie and the others had been trying to tell him about dreamshare all along. Dreamshare helped them escape. It enabled them to do hundreds of things they simply couldn't _do_ in the real world.

As Eddie lay in bed, trying not to suffocate in the close confines of his room, he decided he would make a call tomorrow morning. The second his mother's back was turned, he would sneak his way to the phone and tell his friends he was ready.


	4. Chapter 4

"You're sure you really want to do it?" Richie asked Eddie on Monday morning, while the two of them took their seats in the back row of English class. As a rule, Eddie tried to sit up front. Some bullshit Mrs. K probably told him about _avoiding eye strain, blah blah blah_ , but Richie was slowly but surely converting him to the wonders of the Back Seats.

"I'm sure," Eddie replied. He unzipped his backpack to remove whatever boring-as-fuck book they'd been assigned that week. (Richie "accidentally" left his copy at home. Whoops.) "As soon as you guys are able to dream, I'm going in with you."

"That's a fucking relief. If you'd dragged this on any longer, I might have to, _ya know, make you an offer you can't refuse_."

Eddie burst into laughter. "What the hell is that? Are you trying to be the Godfather?"

"It's my new Mobster Voice. Like, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro and Al Pacino all rolled into one."

"You sound like Tweety Bird doing a really bad Godfather impression."

"Fuck no! I'll make ya sleep with the motherfuckin' fishes for that!"

Eddie started laughing again, all relaxed and carefree, and Richie suddenly didn't care what he sounded like. Eddie _laughed_ , so Richie had pretty much done his job.

But of course class just _had_ to start and Mrs. What's-Her-Face was shushing them and telling them to open their books so they could fall asleep to the mind-numbing blur of _literature_ that awaited them. Adults were always such a fucking buzzkill. The only good part was that Richie conveniently "forgot" his book, so he had to share with Eddie, which meant he didn't have to be bored as fuck all by himself and _might_ actually stay awake until the end of class.

Which was a bonus, because he _really_ couldn't get detention this week since Eddie was finally going to dreamshare and it was a Big Fucking Deal.

He watched Eddie turn to Page 23 in Whatever-the-Hell-They-Were-Reading and scooted his chair until it bumped against Eddie's desk. He bumped into Eddie too, just for a moment, when he leaned in so he could pretend to read. Being close to Eddie always reminded Richie of a laundromat. All detergent-y, like Eddie's paranoid mother was constantly throwing him into the wash and hanging him up to dry. Eddie just always seemed so fucking _clean_.

Richie bumped against Eddie again, mostly out of boredom. (He actually got good grades most of the time. English class was fucking _easy_ , which made it the most boring class imaginable.) It was only a nudge against Eddie's shoulder, nothing he couldn't brush off as an accident. Eddie glanced at him with an irate little I'm-trying-to-concentrate-dickhead look on his face, then turned the page.

But Richie must have nudged him harder than he thought—must have jostled one of his lungs, _oh shit_ —because moments later he Heard It.

Those rapid whistling breaths that happened when Eddie's throat was getting tighter.

Richie leaned in closer—breathing in that soapy cleanliness—in order to hear how serious it was, but Eddie jerked away from him. Okay, so _maybe_ Richie didn't shower that morning, but he did it yesterday! Being close to him couldn't be _that_ bad.

Even though Eddie was now a few inches further away, his breathing had definitely grown Louder. He gripped the edges of his book so tightly, he might actually put dents in its glossy cheap plastic cover. Richie acted fast, thinking, _How the hell do you get an asthma attack during the most boring class of all time?_ and reached for Eddie's fanny pack.

Eddie shoved his hand away. "Don't." His eyes had gotten big. Kind of scared, actually. "I'll do it myself."

It was suddenly awkward to sit there while Eddie retrieved his inhaler and sucked down his medicine. Richie had never felt awkward about Eddie's asthma before. Like, sure, it had been kind of weird when he first met Eddie, but they were just little fucking kids back then, so it was weird the way Ninja Turtles were weird or the way two-headed cows were weird. Not _awkward_.

Eddie's breathing sounded better. Not that Richie was listening _super_ closely or anything, but he could definitely tell. He almost reached out to gently pat him on the back

_(don't don't don't you'll just make it weirder)_

but figured he'd bothered Eddie enough already. He _did_ have a limit, even if his teachers didn't seem to think so.

Richie spent the rest of the period in Silent Misery, because 1.) he couldn't sit there without fidgeting and Laura (total bitch, but had a _great_ ass) who sat on the other side of him kept telling him to stop and 2.) he had this stupid wish that he could reach into Eddie's lungs and just magically knock out his asthma until it ran away crying like a little pussy and never came back.

He would never ever admit this to anyone _ever_ , but sometimes it scared the shit out of him when Eddie had an attack. Sometimes he felt that if anything happened to Eddie, it would be the End of the Fucking World. Like, a black hole would come out of nowhere and suck up the entire universe or something. Because it was easier to watch the world vanish into a swirling vortex than decide what the fuck he would _do_ if Eddie wasn't part of his life anymore. Which sounded really fucking borderline sappy, so he tried not to think any of that shit At All if he could help it, but now and then—especially when class became so boring he had no choice but to _think_ stupid shit like this—he really couldn't help it.

Fortunately for Richie, the End of the Fucking World wasn't coming anytime soon, since Eddie seemed fine by the end of class. Mostly fine, anyway. He barely glanced at Richie when the bell rang. Just loaded up his stuff, muttered, _See you at lunch_ , and took off. He was immediately swallowed up in a crowd of kids, since Eddie was tiny as fuck and could never stand out in a crowd unless it was a crowd of _gerbils_ or something, so Richie didn't even get a chance to watch him walk away.

He held back a sigh and settled for an eyeful of Laura's departing ass, which really _was_ pretty fucking great.

Next class was Geography with Ben, which was also pretty great, because Richie had stayed up stupidly late last night scribbling sketches of the dreamscape he wanted for Eddie's First Time. The kid was popping his dream cherry, after all, so shit had to be perfect.

Ben was nice about the sketches. He promised he'd start planning out the dreamscape in study hall. But when Richie thanked him in his Mobster Voice, Ben looked completely puzzled and asked, "Uh, is that supposed to be the Cowardly Lion?"

" _What?_ "

"You know, from the _Wizard of Oz_?"

Leave it to Ben to get mobsters mixed up with the _Wizard of Fucking Oz_. He'd probably never seen a single gangster movie in his life, unlike Richie, who'd seen plenty and knew what the hell he was talking about. There was _The Godfather Parts 1 and 2_ , of course, and _Mean Streets_ and _Scarfac_ e—the oldass original _and_ the badass Al Pacino remake (fuck yes to _Say hello to my little friend!_ ). And one time Stan made him sit through _Once Upon a Time in America_. That movie was fucking _long_. But it was really important to Stan because all the gangsters were Jewish and shit, and also it had Robert De Niro and Robert De Niro always made things pretty goddamn cool.

But there was no use telling Ben about any of that, because Ben had the soul of a fucking marshmallow and probably only watched movies full of rainbows and ponies. His architecture was rad as fuck, though, and he drew Richie a quick sample while Miss What's-Her-Name droned on about the South American coastline.

Richie had already decided, since the moment he learned Eddie was ready to dreamshare, that Eddie's First Time

_(wishful thinking you sicko)_

would take place at his house. Richie knew he could convince his parents to spend another Saturday away from home, as long as Ben and Mike and Stan were all coming. Richie's parents just adored the hell out of them. Gee whiz, what fine, upstanding young men they were. _Such_ a great influence. Richie couldn't complain, though. His parents _were_ pretty okay and managed not to have a meltdown from raising _him_ as a son. Richie got the feeling they looked at him sometimes and wondered if aliens came down from the sky thirteen years ago, snatched up their real son, and left Richie in his place. It made sense. Only a fucking _alien_ could get a perfectly normal boner for girls but also for—

"Eddie is going to love this," Ben murmured, tapping the sample he had drawn in his notebook. "You really get him, don't you?"

"Yeah," said Richie, suddenly feeling Miserable all over again. "Guess I do."

*

He really _did_.

Yesterday had been pretty hectic for a Sunday afternoon. Bill called him up to drop an unbelievable bombshell— _Eddie wants to start dr-dr-dreamsharing_ —and Richie's head became an explosion of thoughts, all of them wanting to trample all over each other as he tried to visualize the Perfect First Time™.

Then he biked the hell over to Eddie's house. Mrs. K had her jumbo-sized panties in a twist, as usual, because he didn't fucking _call_ first and Eddie had been a _little_ under the weather the night before. Richie was surprised Mrs. K had never tried getting a restraining order against him, but he figured it was because he put so much effort into charming the pants off her. (As far as the saying went, of course, though he could totally do it literally if he _really_ wanted to.)

Once Mrs. Jabba-the-Hutt let him pass, Richie grabbed a very bewildered Eddie and barricaded them both in his room so that Richie could learn Everything that led to Eddie's life-changing decision.

And Eddie told him. In a very breathless, fast-talking, on-the-fucking-verge-of-hysteria _Eddie_ sort of way. How his mom was an Official Piece of Shit (Richie's words, not Eddie's) who wanted to keep him in prison until she finally got too old to guard him and keeled over (Eddie's words) and if dreamshare let him finally learn to _live_ , then he wanted to do it in spite of the risks.

Then Richie couldn't help it. He pulled Eddie into a tight hug and said, _Good for you, Eds_.

Eddie got really quiet. Then he started to breathe harder and wriggled away from Richie so he could get to his inhaler.

Looking back on that memory as Monday's classes came to an end, Richie realized that _twice_ in twenty-four hours he made Eddie have an asthma attack. He knew that was a stupid assumption to make. Eddie was always having asthma attacks at the weirdest-as-fuck moments, when you wouldn't even think it was _possible_ for his lungs to get strained. But Richie couldn't shake the feeling anyway. Couldn't help thinking

_(eddie's not the sick one YOU are richie YOU ARE and you're infecting him)_

that something had shifted between them over the last couple of days. Something he desperately wanted to fix.

Saturday couldn't come fast enough (just like _your mom)_. He convinced his parents he wanted an empty house because Ben was bringing a movie (guaranteed to be wholesome entertainment) and all his friends were coming over to watch it. His parents, probably knowing it was best to appease their alien-child, were really cool about it. They even left him a few bucks to order a pizza.

He ordered half-pepperoni, half-veggie—since Eddie had a sensitivity to anything even remotely spicy—and dug out all the soap and peroxide and shit so Eddie could get the PASIV materials Sparkling Clean. Then he dragged out some drinks that weren't _car-bon-ated_ (not carburated; Eddie was so ridiculous sometimes) and found a wastebasket in case Eddie freaked out and started puking.

Ben or Mike or Beverly might think Richie was over-preparing, but they weren't _there_ when he and Eddie were nine and snuck into the carnival that came to Derry every summer. Richie wanted to ride the roller coaster—which was this tiny little piss-ass baby coaster that looked HUGE to a nine-year-old—and Eddie fucking puked before he even made it onto the ride. (Luckily Bill was there and had lots of practice cleaning that shit off of Georgie, otherwise Richie's young life would have ended that very day, because Sonia Kaspbrak would have torn his limbs apart and tossed them one by one into the canal.)

For one horrible moment, as the designated hour finally arrived and his friends came pouring into the house, Richie had a dizzying flash of what Eddie must go through on a daily basis.

Suddenly Eddie was in his house, ready to embark on the Scariest Moment of His Poor Sheltered Life, and Richie couldn't breathe.

He played it _really_ fucking cool, though, by clapping Eddie on the back and saying, "How the hell are ya, wise guy?"

Beverly shared a grin with Ben. "I can't decide if he's the Cowardly Lion or one of The Three Stooges."

"So much for the perfectly good cigarettes I was going to share with you," Richie told her.

(Eddie was laughing, though, which made the situation Mostly Okay.)

The seven of them crowded the kitchen and ate the pizza first. (Probably not the best idea. It was going to be fucking gross if Eddie ralphed that up.) The PASIV sat in the middle of the table like some futuristic centerpiece, gleaming silver-bright while they all told Eddie stories about their First Times. Richie could tell Eddie was nervous. His voice kept getting all sped-up, like someone was pressing fast-forward on the remote that controlled his vocal chords, and he kept asking Mike about his research the same way he would ask, _Do you know how much bacteria gets collected on just ONE drinking fountain?_

(Eddie had never touched a drinking fountain in his life. One of Mrs. K's Bullshit Commandments.)

After pizza, Bill opened the PASIV to show Eddie how the parts worked, then they all had to wait while Eddie sterilized every fucking needle. The kitchen smelled like a lab afterward. They headed down into the basement, except for Stan, who would be their lookout this time. Stan had chosen to take this role Very Seriously. He even had his birdwatching binoculars hanging around his neck.

"All right, Eddie, here we go," Richie said as he tramped down the basement stairs. "Time to pop your dream cherry."

"Ugh, don't word it like that," said Eddie.

"Do you prefer the lights on or off? I promise it'll be gentle—"

"Shut _up!_ "

The amazing thing about Eddie was that whenever he decided to do something, he fucking _did_ it. Bill asked him one more time if he r-r-really wanted to do this, and Eddie gave him this Look—a true nerves-of-steel kind of look—and said, "Don't ask me that again, Bill."

Richie was fucking proud of him.

For some stupid reason, though, he kind of felt like the End of the Fucking World might be lurking around the corner. It gave him that weird asthma feeling all over again.

Bill and Beverly were situating Eddie on the couch. The PASIV sat open on the coffee table, vials of Somnacin glowing like fire under the basement lights. Eddie still wore his Brave Face, though Richie could just _tell_ he must be feeling exactly what Richie felt the first time he tried dreamshare. It was like Bill had asked him, _Hey R-R-Richie, is it okay if I sh-shove you off a cliff?_ and Richie was like, _Sure! Why the hell not?_

Agreeing to get pushed off a cliff was one thing. Actually standing on the edge was when shit got Serious.

Eddie was totally giving off that deer-in-the-headlights, _oh shit, I'm in the middle of the fucking road, what do I DO?_ kind of vibe while Bill prepared the PASIV. So Richie bounced into the empty spot on the couch next to Eddie.

"Hey," said Richie. "It helps if you don't look at the needle. Just look at me, okay? _Ya got that, pal?_ "

Eddie faced him and gave Richie a shaky smile, and Richie would be pretty fucking okay if the universe suddenly froze itself and he had to stay in that moment forever. But the universe kept ticking away and Bill had a needle in his hand, so Richie kept on talking. He teased Eddie in his Mobster Voice— _just breakin' your balls_ , as the mobsters said—because Eddie didn't think he was the Cowardly Lion or the Three Fucking Stooges like Some People did.

The whole time, Eddie never took his eyes off Richie's face, and when the needle finally slid into his vein, he barely knew what had happened. The drug always worked fast. Eddie's eyes closed and he slumped against the back of the couch and Richie didn't mean to grab Eddie's hand, but there it was, his hand on top of Eddie's and he knew it probably looked faggy as hell, but fuck it.

Ben and Mike were both already under. Beverly was going next, pale wrist waiting as she lounged in an armchair. She looked—no, _stared—_ at Richie and he jerked his hand away, even going as far as wiping it on his jeans like _Eddie germs_ were the worst thing in the world.

(Yeah, right. Eddie probably didn't even _have_ germs, the way his mom kept him all sterilized and shit.)

"He'll b-b-be okay, Richie," said Bill, inspecting the needle he'd jabbed into Eddie's arm.

"I'm not worried," Richie shot back.

Fuck, though, he _should_ be worried, for Bill more than anyone else. He kept hoping that if Eddie finally dreamshared, their circle would be complete and it would drive away whatever demons were dicking around with Bill's subconscious. Richie had tried to create the Best Case Scenario using the following factors:

1.) Eddie's presence, obviously, because Eddie's smile could probably cure all those fucking cancers he was constantly yapping about.

2.) Ben was both the dreamer and the subject. This would ensure a safe dream zone, since Ben's subconscious was probably as harmful as a Care Bear petting a kitten. (Unless somebody threatened Beverly. Then the Care Bear would morph into a Gremlin.)

3.) Bill would be really distracted teaching Eddie how all the dream shit worked. If you wanted to put it in nerd terms, he'd be the Yoda to Eddie's Luke Skywhatever.

And if everything worked out, there would be no rain or boats coming out of nowhere to ruin Eddie's First Time.

Beverly had gone under, leaving Bill and Richie the only two people left awake. The only two in the basement, at least. Stan was upstairs somewhere, probably straightening all the curtains and making sure all the couch cushions were arranged Just Right.

Richie almost— _almost—_ told Bill to stay behind. Go keep watch with Stan, turn on the TV, draw dicks on their faces, whatever, _Just stay out of the dream, Bill. Stay right here where you can't fucking ruin it._

But Bill _wasn't_ going to ruin it. Richie had it all worked out. So when Bill offered Richie the next needle, Richie took it without argument. He made himself comfortable, very aware that Eddie slept just inches away, and plunged the needle into his arm.

In his last moments of consciousness, he thought. _So this is what it's like to sleep with Eddie._

*

The grass had been freshly cut.

Eddie's mom would hate that, would scold and sob if she knew he'd exposed himself to _allergens_ , but Eddie kept walking.

For once he didn't care what his mother might think. He breathed in the fresh-mown grass, daring his allergies to do their worst, and thought about rolling around in it like the carefree kid he was never allowed to be. But he could see Mike and Ben in the outfield, signaling for him to _Come here!_ so Eddie jogged across the grass—actually _jogged_ , without his lungs catching fire—and stopped at first base.

The base was dirty-white under the afternoon sun. Eddie found it beautiful. He imagined all the hundreds of players that had touched that base, sliding to a frantic stop before the baseman could catch them, and wanted to leave his mark there as well. He did it quickly, hopping onto the base and then off again, half-afraid his mother would somehow catch him and drag him off to her car.

Of course, she'd have to find him first.

Eddie got a good look at the baseball diamond stretched before him, safely enclosed by a chain-link fence, and realized this wasn't the diamond they used at school. It wasn't the baseball diamond at Bassey Park either. He could tell he was in _some_ kind of park, though. Beyond the chain-link fence were trees and benches, with little paths curving between them into infinity. At the distant outskirts of the park, he could make out tall gray buildings—three of them, all with hospital names on their fronts. Which was _really_ weird. Derry only had one hospital, as far as Eddie knew. It was comforting, though, knowing a whole army of doctors was such a short distance away.

"Eddie!" Mike called out. He held a catcher's mitt. "We've only got an hour, so let's get started! The others will be here soon!"

 _An hour for what?_ Eddie wondered. He jogged into the outfield, where Mike and Ben were dressed in identical white-and-red uniforms. Since when did they join a baseball team?

And why was Eddie wearing the same uniform?

"Wait, guys—what the—What the _hell's_ happening? Where am I? How'd we _get_ here?"

"That's how it always is when you enter the dreamworld," said Ben. "Like someone tossed you right in the middle of things."

 _Dreamworld_. Of course. This was the day Eddie had decided to dreamshare. He hadn't realized he would be plunged into another world so suddenly. He thought it would be more like stepping into the dream on his own terms, but instead it seemed like the dream had swallowed him up.

Eddie studied his surroundings again, taking in the beautiful green field in a daze. He was dreaming. _Dreaming_. His mom couldn't catch him here. She would never find him and he was free free _free_.

He must have still seemed dazed, because Mike said, "Check your totem."

Eddie did. When he pulled the little T-Rex from his pocket and gave it a squeeze, the dinosaur roared, which it never did in real life. Eddie gasped and nearly dropped the toy, then started to laugh.

"Can we play ball?" he asked.

"Of course," said Beverly, who wasn't there a moment ago. She wore the uniform, red stripes on a white background. Two of the stripes formed a V shape. "That's what we're here for." She carried a shiny metal bat and gave it to Eddie.

Eddie ran his fingers along the smooth side of the bat. KASPBRAK was written there in silver letters. "How did you guys know this is _exactly_ what I've been wanting?"

Beverly glanced at Ben, who grinned and said, "Somebody might have given me a hint on Monday."

_Richie._

Instinctively, Eddie reached for his inhaler, which was nestled in the front pocket of his shirt. (Could he _get_ asthma attacks in the dream world?) He realized he was being stupid

_(it means nothing absolutely nothing not a goddamn thing)_

and resumed admiring the way his bat glowed in the sun. He automatically decided he was _not_ going to ask Richie about this. About _any_ of it.

"Come on," said Beverly, and suddenly she held a baseball, as white and red as their uniforms. She tossed it in the air and caught it. "Let's do some practice swings. I'll pitch."

Eddie supposed that in real life, he would have made a complete ass of himself trying to hit the ball. He'd never swung a bat in his life, after all, and his reflexes were probably laughable. But in the dreamworld, he _wanted_ to hit that ball more than anything, and his desire alone seemed to be enough. He stood at home plate with a sense of purpose, like he had always been meant to stand there, and gripped his bat with a confidence he normally never felt. When he glanced toward first base, he caught a glimpse of Bill, who gave him a thumbs-up.

And Beverly let the ball fly.

The ball _cracked!_ across the field when it collided with Eddie's bat. It soared up, up in the air—s _traight out of the park!—_ and Eddie watched it, feeling stunned, feeling there was _no_ way he could have done that on the first try.

"Go!" Beverly urged him, gesturing toward first base. "Run, Eddie!"

Eddie took off.

He _ran_ with all his strength past first base, second base, third. And there he was back at home plate, cheers erupting around him as he completed the first home run of his life.

Beverly pulled him into a hug, then Bill joined in. Then Mike and Ben and they were all hugging him, everyone but Richie— _Where is he?—_ and Eddie could _breathe_. He wanted to toss his inhaler into the air, crack it across the park with his bat, and tell his mom to shove all his medicines up her _ass_ because Eddie could breathe and no one could fucking stop him.

"You did great, Eddie," said Bill, without a trace of a stutter. He seemed younger, suddenly. Less tired. "Ben's going to bring some of his projections over so we can play a real game."

"Projections?"

Bill pointed at the bleachers behind the dugout. Eddie realized there were _people_ there, some of them holding sodas and hotdogs. Several boys and girls came down from the stands and just like _that_ , their outfits changed into black uniforms with silver stripes.

"Ben's the subject of the dream," Bill explained. "His subconscious fills the dreamworld with projections. They're basically all the random people that fill a dreamspace. None of them will hurt you unless you threaten Ben."

 _Or Beverly_ , Eddie thought, watching the way the sun glowed on her hair as she tossed the ball to Ben. Ben caught it with awe written all over his face, like she had thrown him a ball of solid gold.

But _where_ was—

"EDDIE! You get away from there! Think of all the _dust_ going into your lungs!"

Eddie froze, turning sick with dread.

She couldn't possibly be here. She _couldn't_.

But she was. _There_ was his mother striding across the baseball diamond, casting an angry shadow over Eddie's victory.

"How could you defy me like this, Eddie?" she shouted. "Don't you _know_ that playing baseball can give you cancer?"

This couldn't be happening. It was a nightmare. It _had_ to be a nightmare. He would wake up soon and everything would be back to normal—

And suddenly his mother disappeared. Eddie heard laughter in place of her voice—horribly _familiar_ laughter—and there was Richie where his mother had been standing just a moment ago, having hysterics over what _he_ obviously thought was the perfect prank.

"Holy shit, Eds. Your fucking _face!_ I swear you were going to piss yourself!"

"I'm going to punch you in _your_ fucking face, Richie!" said Eddie.

He chased Richie across the diamond and finally tackled him at third base. They both collapsed in the dirt and Eddie would normally be horrified at the mess, but instead he was _laughing_ like he was invincible.

Richie was laughing too. He stood up without bothering to brush the dirt off his clothes and said, "Hey Eddie, looks like we made it to third base."

Which made Eddie chase him all over again until they ended back at home plate, both out of breath (but in the normal way, not in the asthma way, which was the best feeling in the world).

"What have I told you about fucking around, Richie?" scolded Bill. "Can't we have _one_ dream where you're not pulling pranks?"

"All right, _dad_ ," said Richie. "I'll try to be good."

Richie kept his word and (mostly) behaved himself as Bill organized them into a team. They played against a team of Ben's projections, which was incredibly weird because the projections never said anything and went through the motions of playing ball like wind-up toys. Eddie thought about poking one with his bat, just to see if he would react, then thought better of it. They _were_ part of Ben, after all. Somehow. All this dream stuff gave him a headache when he fixated on it too much, so Eddie shoved it aside and lost himself in the game.

In the first inning, Eddie hit two home runs. During the second inning, he played first baseman. Beverly was the pitcher and Ben was the catcher (which Richie made a joke about, _of course_ ). Bill, playing second base, praised Eddie loudly after Eddie sent the first opposing batter back to the dugout, and suddenly the sun seemed to shine less brightly. Or was Eddie imagining it? He caught the next ball that came his way and everyone was happy for him, but _Bill_ cheered the loudest again, and if Bill was a couple decades older he'd probably be yelling, _That's my boy!_

There was definitely a cloud over the sun.

Mike noticed the first raindrops and said, "Oh, shit."

"Game over!" Richie shouted from the outfield. "Do you hear me, Bill? It's _over_. Let's get the hell out of here!"

Bill checked his watch as more raindrops fell. "Time's not up yet!"

"Then let's all shoot ourselves! I don't fucking care! I'm getting Eddie out of here if you won't—"

A thunderclap cut off Richie's words, followed by a bolt of lightning that struck a tree in the distance.

"Will someone tell me what the _fuck_ is happening?" Eddie demanded. He was starting to get drenched. _Careful, Eddie, you'll catch a cold_ , his mother's voice chided in his head. "We're in a dream, aren't we? So somebody _dream_ the rain storm away!"

"You can't," said a small voice behind Eddie. "I _like_ the rain. Billy does too. He likes it more than he likes _you_ , Eddie!"

The voice belonged to a little boy in a yellow rain jacket. His left hand clutched a paper boat. The entire right arm was mangled and bloody. When he smiled at Eddie, dirty rainwater gushed out of his mouth.

Then the boat became a knife and the ghost of Georgie Denbrough pounced on Eddie, stabbing stabbing stabbing until everything became black—

*

—and Eddie woke with a gasp.

His heart pounded a million beats a minute, letting him know that yes, he was alive, and no, he didn't have a gaping hole in his chest with all his guts spilling out. But the terror was still incredibly real. It was choking him, suffocating him, weighing him down so that he couldn't get to his inhaler.

It could also be the fact that Richie, true to his usual sleeping patterns, had wrapped himself around Eddie and was slowly squeezing the life out of him.

Forget the Voices. Richie's true talent was imitating a python.

"Get _off_ me!" Eddie muttered, shoving Richie away until his fanny pack was free. His heart still threatened to burst out of his chest like the Kool-Aid man crashing through a wall. He kept seeing _Georgie_ in his rain-slicked jacket, smiling and holding the knife.

 _Bill's losing his shit,_ Richie had told him a week ago.

No fucking kidding.

His asthma medicine blasted down his throat right when his friends jolted awake. Ben and Beverly and Mike immediately began talking over each other, all of them demanding to know if Eddie was all right. Bill sat in a silent daze and wouldn't meet Eddie's eyes.

But that was the last thing Eddie noticed, because Richie was awake and murmuring _fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_ and hugging Eddie so tightly he was like a python all over again.

"I'm all right!" said Eddie, trying to shove him away for the second time. "It was a dream! Just a stupid fucking dream!"

"But it was your f-f-first dream," Bill spoke up. His eyes had grown centuries older. "Your _f-first_ , and I fucked it up, Eddie."

"You sure did," said Richie. He finally released his grip on Eddie and glared at Bill.

"You have to let Georgie go, Bill," Beverly said gently. "This has gone too far."

"I c-can't." And suddenly Bill was blinking hard, struggling to hold back tears. "You d-d-don't know what it's like, wanting m-more than anything to go b-b-back in time. To f-fix _everything!_ When I dr-dream, I can't keep him out!"

"Then maybe we should all stop dreaming," said Richie. "It's not worth it."

"No!" said Eddie. The strength in his own voice surprised him. "We're not going to stop dreaming. There's got to be a way we can help Bill. In dreams, you can do anything, right? If I can do a home run without needing my inhaler, then there's _got_ to be a way we can fix Bill!"

"Yeah, we can send him in for therapy," Richie said.

" _Richie_ ," Mike said warningly.

"His fucking brother went psycho and _stabbed_ Eddie! Or did you happen to miss that?"

The basement door opened and Stan emerged, peering at them from the top of the stairs. "Is everything all right?"

"Everything's f-f-fine," said Bill, rising from his seat on the rug. His hands were clenched at his sides. "Everyone g-give me your needles. I'm going home."

"Bill, wait—" Beverly began, but one look from Bill silenced her.

"I'm _going_ home," Bill repeated.

A shadow had descended over the basement, similar to the shadow of Eddie's mother, but worse somehow. No one tried to stop Bill. He put away the PASIV materials and shut the silver briefcase with a final _snap!_

The room had become suffocating again. Eddie took another blast from his inhaler, while Richie shot him a concerned look, and Eddie wanted to throw the inhaler at his stupid face. This was _Richie's_ fault. Why the hell was he so worked up over Eddie when _Bill_ was the one who was hurting?

The question burst out of him the moment Bill left the basement, door slamming in his wake.

"Why'd you have to be such a dick, Richie? I was trying to help him!"

"It was a _dream_ , Richie," added Ben. "I know it was bad, but it's over now. We're all here. We're all _safe_."

Before Richie got a chance to respond, Stan demanded, "What the hell happened? Is Bill getting worse?"

"The worst he's ever been," Beverly answered. Her voice was soft and sad. "Stan, we actually _saw_ Georgie in the dream. He was _there_."

Stan sank down onto the bottom step of the basement stairs. "No way."

Eddie remembered, more sharply than ever, that they had been dealing with this for months without him. "That's never happened before?"

"We've all had glimpses here and there," said Mike. "A couple weeks ago I swear I saw a yellow rain jacket, but then it was gone. I always kind of figured that Georgie was there in the dream world with us, and that maybe we'd see him one of these days, but _this_ was insane. It felt like... like a horror movie."

"Like the end of the world," Richie said flatly. He had retreated from Eddie, keeping to his own side of the couch. "It felt like the end of the fucking world."

"You have to apologize to Bill," said Eddie. "Do you think I _liked_ getting stabbed by a crazy ghost boy? It was fucking horrible! But letting Bill deal with all this shit on his own is even more horrible! You told me, Richie, that Bill's going to keep on dreaming even if the rest of you quit. And he's going to keep torturing himself with Georgie if we don't find a way to stop it!"

Once again, Eddie was surprised by his own words. He wanted to help Bill. He did, he _did_. But there was another, more selfish, reason too. Now that he had tasted the freedom of dreamshare, he couldn't bear to give it up.

"I'll call Bill tomorrow," said Richie. He was looking at Eddie strangely, sort of how Ben always looked at—

But no, that was wrong. And impossible. It wasn't _possible_.

_(girls girls girls he likes girls he likes girls)_

"And you'll tell him you're sorry?" Eddie asked, tearing his eyes from Richie's face, practically spitting up the words.

"You betcha, wise guy."

Later, after Eddie biked home and sat at the dinner table with his mother, he was able to set aside the Georgie-related horror and focus on his own private victory. Between the usual chiding of _Drink your milk, Eddie_ and _You need more fiber, Eddie_ , he felt like he had triumphed over his mother's wishes. Sure, he would drink a whole glass of milk to please her. And yes, he would eat _all_ his vegetables. But she couldn't stop him from playing baseball. Couldn't stop him from running and having fun and _living_ like a normal kid.

"You're looking feverish, Eddie," Sonia observed, peering at him across the table. "Let me feel your forehead. I think you should stay inside tomorrow—"

"I'm fine, ma!" Eddie groaned.

If feeling like he was fucking alive made him look feverish, then what was he like before? A vampire?

"I still want you to be careful, Eddie. We're heading into cold and flu season! You _know_ how easily you get sick."

Jeez. Last year, when six of Eddie's classmates all got the flu at once, his mother kept Eddie home from school for _weeks_ and wouldn't let him out of the house. Richie got detention because he kept skipping class to go visit him.

Eddie couldn't leave the kitchen table until he took every one of his vitamins, plus an extra pill his mother got from their kitchen medicine cabinet. Eddie could take it without complaint. All he had to do was think of fresh-mown grass and the smooth metallic feel of a bat in his hands, and all his mother's fussing meant nothing at all.

His dreams that night were a jumbled mixture of pleasant and horrifying. Georgie appeared in a rain jacket that dripped with blood, until a train showed up and chased him away. Then Eddie was back on Richie's couch and Richie did his best imitation of a python all over again, only this time Eddie didn't push him away.

When he woke up, confused and struggling for breath, he discovered his sheets were wet.

It scared him more than any dream-ghost ever could.


	5. Chapter 5

_January 1990_

There had been hardly any Georgie sightings since October. Mainly because the holidays—along with the weather—kept them from dreamsharing most of the time, but Ben preferred to be optimistic. He liked to think it was _good_ that they finally confronted Bill about his problem. Richie could have been more tactful about it, of course, but at least the issue was out in the open now. Bill knew that _they_ knew about his projection of Georgie.

Maybe it made him self-conscious enough to keep Georgie's ghost away. Maybe all the chaos of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's kept him distracted.

Or maybe it was the fact that Ben, when the opportunity allowed it, was teaching Bill how to build.

Bill had a creative streak that came to life in the dreamworld. His efforts had been limited to buildings and monuments and basic landscapes, until Ben made him imagine entire city streets down to the smallest detail. Soon the two of them were working together to help Eddie experience all the fun he'd missed out on in the real world. Richie was constantly passing them ideas (and making them _swear not to fucking tell anyone_ ) of what to build for Eddie. Ben found it incredible that a boy who looked fairly healthy on the surface had been kept so sheltered. According to Richie, Eddie had never climbed a tree. He had never been on a roller coaster. He had never jumped on a trampoline. Richie tried his best to hide it, always passing off his ideas so casually, but Ben could tell this was important to him. That _Eddie_ was important.

They all took turns playing lookout, now that Eddie took part in dreamshare. This arrangement also seemed to work in Bill's favor. During the few times they'd been allowed to dreamshare between November and January, Bill kept watch for them twice. He took down notes for Mike and sketched out Ben's descriptions of the dreamworld. He never mentioned his problems, though they all knew it was a matter of time until Georgie came to haunt them again.

The breaking point came at the end of January.

With winter snow and winter darkness upon them, it was difficult to transport the PASIV on the back of Silver, so dreamshare took place—like in the days of summer freedom—primarily at Bill's house. They were a small group that Saturday morning. Ben, Bill, and Beverly as the dreamers, with Mike keeping watch. Ben felt like he got to know Bill best in moments like these, without the whole group. The moment he and Beverly and Bill went under, Ben could _feel_ a weight slide from Bill's shoulders. Like he was no longer pressured to be their Leader.

Ben had brought them to a vibrant green countryside, where houses were peacefully spaced apart and few cars came to trouble the quiet roads. He focused his energy on one house in particular: the house he secretly considered to be his future home with Beverly.

He could barely even _think_ of it that way without his face heating up, but the more detail he put into the house, the more he wanted it to be Beverly's. _His_ and Beverly's. _Mrs. Beverly Hanscom_ , he thought as he placed a flowerpot near the front door. _This is where we'll live. I'll be an architect—a real one!—and make plenty of money and take her far, far away from her dad, and nobody will make her cry ever again._

"This place is beautiful, Ben," Beverly said when she crossed the threshold. "It might be the _best_ thing you've created so far."

"I was hoping you'd like it," said Ben, finding it impossible to meet her eyes. He had never felt more ridiculous. Never felt more _reckless_. She would put two and two together, because Beverly was just as smart as she was beautiful, and he'd finally have to confess—

"I wish we could all live here," Bill said, gazing wistfully up the grand staircase that led to the second floor. "All seven of us. Away from the real world."

"Away from all the bullshit," Beverly added.

And Ben remembered, for the first time since she walked over the threshold, that he wasn't alone with Beverly. Bill was here too. Bill, who could always catch Beverly's eye without even trying, though Ben didn't feel bitter over it. He never had.

"It'd be like our own clubhouse," said Bill, turning his gaze to a bay window that looked out on a garden in full bloom. "Something that's _ours_ , like the dreams."

The idea hit Ben so hard, he felt like he'd been caught in a sudden avalanche.

"What if we _did_ build a clubhouse?" he demanded. "A _real_ one? Down in the Barrens, maybe! We could keep it hidden so nobody finds it. If we pool our allowances, we could buy all the materials and borrow the tools from Mike!"

Beverly and Bill were both staring at him like he was the center of the universe. Beverly took Ben by the hand and he had to summon all his willpower

_(marry me marry me marry me)_

to keep his cool.

"It could be our place to _dream_ ," said Beverly. "Whenever we wanted."

They would have to wait until the snow melted, of course. The Barrens became a winter wilderness in January, filled with hazards. But Ben was already drawing up blueprints inside his head. He dreamed up a little wooden model to show Beverly what he was thinking, while her eyes glowed in the sunshine that came through the bay windows.

 _Someday I'll build her a house like this,_ Ben promised himself, though someday was years away. In the meantime, he could design her a clubhouse.

He got so absorbed in creating his model and talking through his ideas that he didn't even notice when Bill disappeared.

Beverly suddenly frowned and glanced over shoulder. "Where'd Bill go?"

The two of them were alone. Ben could almost pretend that his dreams had become reality, that he was all alone with Beverly in _their_ house, but she was pulling away from him. The vision of her in a bridal gown began to shatter as she called Bill's name.

Ben had no choice but to call Bill's name too.

When they climbed the grand staircase and searched the second floor, Beverly froze and placed a finger to her lips. A voice drifted out of an open door. _Two_ voices.

"Bill's in there," Ben whispered.

"And Georgie," Beverly whispered back.

_No._

Ben's insides turned cold. Not now. Not _here_ , in the house he built for Beverly.

He rushed to the door before Beverly could stop him and halted, staring at the bedroom he definitely _hadn't_ created. It was horribly familiar, for one thing. Ben had caught glimpses of it on visits to Bill's house, though he had never seen Georgie's bedroom as vividly as he saw it now. Bill sat on the floor, bright-colored Lego bricks scattered all around him. He handed one to Georgie with a smile on his face both beautiful and tragic.

"Bill," Ben spoke up from the doorway. "He—he shouldn't _be_ here."

The smile slipped off Bill's face. Georgie wasn't wearing his rain jacket for once. Both arms were whole and uninjured, but a drop of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth when he looked up at Ben.

Thunder boomed in the distance.

"He's right, Billy," said Georgie. "I shouldn't be here. You know why? Because you killed me, Billy. You KILLED me!"

"No," said Bill, dropping Legos on the floor as his eyes went wide.

"I trusted you," Georgie wailed. He had started to cry, while rain lashed against the window. "You get to have fun with all your friends and I'm dead and it's all your fault, Billy. It's all your—"

_BANG! BANG!_

The rain abruptly stopped.

Georgie disappeared and Bill slumped over on the rug, bleeding from the center of his forehead.

Beverly stood behind Ben, tears in her eyes as she held the gun that shot Bill out of the dream. She dropped the weapon and went to Ben, folding her arms around him as she cried and cried. It no longer mattered that this was supposed to be their dream house. Ben felt like crying too.

"I had to do it, Ben," Beverly sobbed into his shoulder. "I _had_ to."

He stroked her back and ran his fingers through the winter fire of her hair. When she raised her tear-streaked face, fighting to catch her breath, he kissed the left side of her forehead. Softly, near the temple. It happened so fast, Ben didn't have time to think until it was too late.

"I'm sorry," he whispered hastily.

"Don't be," she said, and held onto him tighter.

It was more than enough.

The dream ended and they woke in Bill's garage, where Bill was in the middle of confessing everything to Mike. All traces of their Leader had disappeared. Bill was just a kid, a _scared_ kid, haunted and shaken.

"I d-d-don't know what to do," said Bill. "I c-can't keep _doing_ this to you guys."

"I'll build a wall to keep Georgie out next time he appears," Ben suggested.

"We can all kick ourselves out of the dream," said Beverly.

"I've got a better idea," said Mike, who had been listening patiently and taking notes. "Bill, I think you need to talk to my dad. We won't tell him about the PASIV, but you should at least tell him about Georgie. He'll understand."

Bill nodded.

"I'll ask if you can come over to dinner next weekend," said Mike. He got up from his lawn chair and rested a hand on Bill's shoulder. "It'll be okay, Bill. We'll all make sure it's okay."

*

_March 1990_

Richie had been fucking right all those months ago. Bill _did_ need therapy and Richie was going to rub it in everyone's faces every fucking chance he got.

He wouldn't say Bill was _fixed_ , exactly. In the dreamworld, raindrops still appeared out of nowhere when Bill let his guard down, but then Bill would " _redirect his energy"_ (Mr. Hanlon's rad words) and the rain would disappear.

Mike's dad saw all kinds of crazy shit in Vietnam and knew a fuckton of guys that died there, so he knew all about grief and shit. He also knew a lot about something called PTSD, which apparently caused Ghost Georgie to keep showing up, and he spent literally _hours_ talking to Bill about it. But it must have worked. For an adult, Mr. Hanlon was actually pretty fucking cool.

One of the things Bill did to redirect his energy was build _nonstop_. He and Ben would have these crazy build-a-thons to see who could construct the tallest tower or grow the most trees. Richie usually stayed out of it. He would rather help Eddie do all the things Mrs. K wouldn't let him do in the real world, or smoke cigarettes with Beverly because dream cigarettes were the only kind he wanted to smoke anymore. (Turns out that secondhand smoke shit is Real and it's Fucking Serious.)

"What do you want for your birthday?" Beverly asked while they were dream-smoking.

They were lounging in the grass beneath a tree, while Eddie and Stan played catch nearby. Baseball was one thing Eddie _never_ got tired of. It was a Fucking Crime that Mrs. K wouldn't let him play for real. Like, what if Eddie was actually a secret baseball genius and could play just as well (maybe even better) than he did in the dreamworld? He could join the Big League or Whatever-the-Fuck-You-Called-It and become super famous and make millions of dollars—enough to get Mrs. K some plastic surgery and maybe a new fucking brain while he was at it.

 _That_ was what Richie really wanted for his birthday. A chance to make Eddie eternally happy. (Or just Eddie in general, really.)

But of course he could never tell Beverly, so he took an _extra_ cool-looking drag on his cigarette and said, "Eddie's mom in lingerie, popping out of a birthday cake. Of course, it would have to be a really big fucking cake."

Beverly rolled over in the grass, collapsing into giggles. "That sounds lovely, Richie, but what do you really want? What do you want us to dream for you?"

His eyes followed the baseball as Eddie tossed it to Stan. It sailed too high overhead and Stan had to chase it, looking ridiculous in his neat-and-tidy button-down shirt. Eddie was smiling in a Certain Way that made everything hurt. Like when Richie was little and he wanted a dog More Than Anything in the World, but his mom kept saying, _No, Richie, they make too much of a mess—_ which was fair, he guessed, because Richie made enough of a mess on his own and a dog would have fucking tripled that—but as a little kid it _ached_ whenever he saw a dog and couldn't take it home with him.

Beverly suddenly reached for his hand. Her eyes were filled with something he didn't want to identify. "Hey. Richie—"

"You guys don't have to get me _anything_ ," he said, pulling away from her. He dropped his cigarette in the grass and watched it smolder, tempted to light the whole fucking park on fire. "It's just a stupid birthday! It doesn't mean anything. I just want to get out of class, maybe fuck around at the arcade for an hour, and eat a shitload of cake afterwards, and _that's it_."

She rolled onto her back and took a drag. "If you say so."

That was the cool thing about Beverly. She never pushed things. She just _went with it_. But she probably wouldn't be so fucking cool about the stupid _ache_ he felt when he looked at Eddie. She would think he was a freak. Maybe she already did.

He forced his gaze away from Eddie

_(you can't have him richie it will make too much of a mess)_

and shifted it toward the city in the distance, where skyscrapers kept shooting up like weeds. It was pretty fucking weird. All of a sudden he'd hear this loud _CREAK_ like the world's loudest door Slowly Opening, and this bigass skyscraper would sprout up from the ground. The new one was blue, Bill's color. All of Ben's buildings were colored green.

"Who's winning?" Beverly asked around her cigarette.

"Fuck if I know. I think Ben's got more buildings."

She smiled. "I think Ben will always win when he puts his mind to it."

Richie had caught her saying things like that lately. Last week, they all watched a movie at Stan's house and out of nowhere, Beverly said she thought John Candy was kind of cute. John Fucking _Candy._ And Ben got all embarrassed-looking, like someone had pulled his pants down.

Now _there_ was an idea.

Richie focused his attention on Stan, who was just about to throw the ball to Eddie. Suddenly Stan's shorts fell to his ankles, revealing a pair of My Little Pony boxers.

"Damn it, Richie!" cried Stan.

Richie braced himself for the inevitable bullet to the head. But before Stan fired, he saw Eddie _laughing_ like Richie's prank was the funniest shit ever, and thought, _At least I can die happy._

*

He woke on a bean bag chair in Ben's basement. Ben and Beverly and Bill were all together on the couch, Ben's hand clasped around Beverly's. Somehow that made everything Hurt again, so Richie got up and walked around the basement, which was silent since Mike was upstairs, making sure Ben's mom didn't come home while they were dreaming.

Eddie slept in a folding chair near the TV. According to his wristwatch, he had to pop his daily pill in twenty-one minutes, or else his liver would explode or something. Richie wasn't too sure why Eddie _needed_ so many fucking medicines. Aside from the asthma, he seemed fine. He _looked_ fine. More than fine.

And Richie didn't _mean_ to stand so close to him, but—

There it was. His hand on Eddie's wrist, right below the needle in his vein.

Richie could feel a faint pulse pounding there. He had heard that most people had this Little Voice inside their heads that warned them not to do incredibly stupid shit, but Richie figured he either didn't _have_ that Little Voice or he simply couldn't hear it, because there was his hand again, acting like it had a mind of its own. He touched the side of Eddie's face, just for an instant. When Eddie didn't wake, he touched him there again, feeling like he was going to fucking die because he was _so close_ and it would be _so easy—_

And would it really be so wrong? Were guy lips really _that_ different from girl lips? Did it really fucking _matter?_

His thumb brushed Eddie's bottom lip. He could feel Eddie's breath against his skin, soft and steady without a trace of asthma. So close. He was _so_ fucking close and he could do it if he Really wanted to, he could do it he could do it—

The basement door slammed open like a gunshot.

Richie pulled away from Eddie _just_ in time as Mike barreled down the stairs.

He had been _so_ close.

"Ben's mom is home," said Mike. "We've got to wake everyone."

Shit. Interrupted by Ben's fucking _mom_.

The only good thing about this situation was that Richie got to use The Kick for the first time ever. A Kick, according to the nerds who made up all the dreamshare lingo, was what you did when you woke someone up By Force. You didn't _have_ to literally kick them, but that was the easiest way to do it if they were sitting in a lightweight chair.

Like Eddie.

Mike was busy shaking Stan awake. Richie smiled and gave Eddie's chair a good hard _kick_.

It scooted forward a little as Eddie jerked awake. "What the FUCK?"

" _Shh!_ " Mike shushed him. He shook Beverly while Stan worked on Ben.

Eddie stared wildly around the room, one hand creeping toward his fanny pack. "What the hell's going on?"

"Your mom couldn't get enough of my dick last night," Richie told him. "She's on her way over here."

"WHAT?"

" _Guys!_ " scolded Mike. "It's all right, Eddie. _Ben's_ mom is here."

"Yeah, _she_ couldn't get enough either—"

" _Richie!_ "

They put the PASIV away and shoved it under a blanket just in time. When Ben's mom entered the basement to Check Up On Them™, Ben and Bill had Monopoly open on the coffee table, digging game pieces out of the box. She flashed that certain Mom Smile that meant she had bought their bullshit and said all the typical mom things to Ben, like _I'm so glad you and your friends are having fun, sweetie_ and _Don't forget to do your homework later!_

It had been a close call.

Really Fucking Close.

When Richie got home an hour later, he shut himself up in his room. The first thing he saw, the moment his door closed, was his poster of Phoebe Cates in a bikini. He still thought she was hot as fuck. Which was good. It was _great_. But it didn't explain why he almost did That Thing while Eddie was asleep.

_(fucking pervert)_

He still _wanted_ to do That Thing to Eddie. But he also wanted to do it to Phoebe Cates every time he looked at her tits. So he wasn't _that_ much of a freak. Only half a freak.

And it wasn't like he went through this shit on a regular basis. He was _definitely_ into chicks. But then there was Eddie, who was just—

Eddie was different. He was Important. Like, the most important thing in the whole fucking world. Richie didn't _need_ his friends to build some stupid dreamworld for his birthday because Eddie was real and there was no fucking _way_ to substitute him—unless somebody Forged him, of course, but it still wouldn't be the same.

What he did need was a cigarette. He gave them away to Beverly since he was trying to quit (Eddie's stupid fault), but there _had_ to be a stray one somewhere. For emergencies and shit.

First he checked the pile between his dresser and his bed. He found the Beastie Boys T-shirt he hadn't seen in months (fuck yes, he'd been wondering where that went!), along with a girlie mag he had Really Enjoyed a few weeks ago. Two photographs were stuck between the pages. Richie's mouth went dry as he pulled out the photos and found Eddie's face staring out from both of them. It probably wasn't normal when your fucking _male_ friend gave you the urge to jerk off. No, he _knew_ it wasn't normal. That was why he always stuck Eddie's pictures in his girlie mags, so that way it Wasn't Gay.

It wasn't. _He_ wasn't. He couldn't be. Not when he had gotten _so_ close to third base with Sarah in his Geography class.

It happened right before Christmas break. Mrs. Titanic-Tits, a.k.a. his Geography teacher, made them do a project on North Africa together because that was what teachers Fucking Did. He'd never really paid much attention to Sarah before, but she was actually pretty cute and was always wearing these fancyass blazers like she was trying to imitate Winona Ryder in _Heathers_. She thought Richie's Voices were _Soooo Funny_ (her words exactly) and had just broken up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago, so she was all eager to get back at the little prick for being such a shithead.

He ended up at Sarah's house after school while her parents were away. And _then_ they ended up studying things that were definitely _not_ related to North Africa and she was all ready to drop her panties for him (they were white with little pink starbursts all over them), but then her fucking parents came home and he had to rub one out in the bathroom while she put her preppy little wannabe- _Heathers_ clothes back on.

So it wasn't like he had any trouble getting it up for girls. _That_ was normal. But then Eddie would laugh at one of his jokes or get all flustered over germs or hit a home run in the dream world and all the girls Richie had ever felt up suddenly Didn't Fucking Matter, because he didn't really

_(love)_

like any of them _that_ much anyway.

He sure as hell wouldn't quit smoking for any of them. He was _so_ fucked.


	6. Chapter 6

Eddie had one hell of a time convincing his mom to let him spend Saturday at Richie's house.

Richie's birthday fell on a Wednesday, which, in _his_ words, was the _lamest thing to happen since your mom_. So they all decided to celebrate on Saturday instead, since Stan's dad was strict about staying out late on school nights. And Beverly's dad didn't know she hung out with a bunch of boys all the time, so it was easier for her to show up on the weekend when fewer questions were asked.

It was an excellent plan, until Eddie made the mistake of sniffling in front of his mother on Thursday night. He wasn't even _sick_. His nose just ran a little sometimes during cold weather, so he kept a secret stash of tissues hidden away to take care of it, but he let his guard down. Letting your guard down, in the Kaspbrak household, was a surefire way of convincing his mother he would soon be on his deathbed if she didn't take _special precautions_ with him. These special precautions almost always involved keeping him home from school. And sure enough, he had to stay home on Friday. Richie sacrificed his lunch time to use the school's pay phone so he could call Eddie's house. The two of them chatted and joked around for over twenty minutes.

Richie was always doing things like that for him. Sometimes it was nice. Other times it was terrifying. When Eddie had his birthday back in November, Richie instructed Ben to design an amusement park, complete with the most elaborate roller coasters Eddie had ever seen, which was a crazy combination of nice _and_ terrifying.

But now it was Richie's birthday (or at least the celebration of it) and Eddie couldn't return the favor because Richie didn't want to dreamshare. He wanted to celebrate his birthday stuck in the _real world_ instead.

Eddie didn't understand it. In the dreamworld you could have literally anything you wanted, but all Richie cared about was holing up in his basement with a movie and leftover cake.

Which was perfectly safe, at least, but try telling that to Eddie's mother. She started crying in her efforts to keep Eddie home, which normally would have worked, but all his hours of dreaming gave him strength against her tears. In the dreamworld, he had done things that would horrify her. He played games and sports and ran forever without losing his breath. He was strong. He was fast. And in the dreamworld, he _wasn't_ sick.

In the end, she let him go to Richie's, but only after she bundled him up in two sweaters, his thickest jacket, an itchy wool hat, and an extra snug scarf. _And_ she made him take a thermos full of chicken broth. "We can't take any risks with you, Eddie," she said, practically choking him with the scarf—which itched as much as the hat. "It's still so chilly and you catch cold _so_ easily. You must promise me you'll be extra careful at _that boy's_ house."

She never spoke Richie's name if she could help it. Like she was afraid of invoking something evil. But she had _plenty_ to say about Richie without letting his name touch her lips. According to her, _that boy_ needed his mouth washed out with soap (which, okay, was _true)_ and he was _destined for trouble_ (probably also true). And yes, Eddie could admit that Richie was loud and rude and talked about sex way too much. He got detention at least twice a month and saw the principal so often, he might as well set up a desk in his office. He was every bit the bad influence Eddie's mom claimed him to be, and yet bad friends didn't spend hours dreaming up new and exciting ways to make you happy. They didn't call you during their lunchtime when you were stuck home alone.

So Eddie showed up at Richie's house all bundled up like an Eskimo, clutching his warm thermos. He was the last one to arrive. Richie pounced on him the moment he opened the door and immediately made fun of his thermos and all his layers, but Eddie didn't really mind for once.

Richie was wearing the birthday present Eddie gave him on Wednesday. Eddie got him a new Beastie Boys T-shirt, since Richie _thought_ he lost the old one (only to discover it in the junkyard of his bedroom). Richie claimed he liked the new one better.

"Holy shit, Eddie, was your mom trying to strangle you?" said Richie, fumbling at the impossibly tight knot of Eddie's scarf. "I _knew_ she was kinky. She told me so the last time we—"

"Don't say it!" cried Eddie, laughing as he whacked Richie away with his thermos. "You asshole! You're always picking on my mom!"

"Because she's so damn hot!"

"No, she's not! You know she's not!"

They playfully bickered another minute or two, until Richie's mom appeared and reminded him that the rest of his friends were waiting in the basement.

Eddie's hat had ended up on the floor after Richie grabbed it. Mrs. Tozier offered to take it, along with his jacket and scarf, leaving Eddie feeling considerably less restricted with only his two sweaters remaining. The house was warm and comfortable. It always felt that way during the cold months, like Eddie could curl up right there on the floor and happily shut his eyes for a few hours. Richie's parents always welcomed Eddie. They _liked_ him. Richie always acted like his parents were a drag because they didn't "get him," but Eddie thought they were both refreshingly normal. There were some days—especially ones like this, when his mother's warnings about his delicate health echoed loudly in his ears—when Eddie felt tempted to park himself in the Tozier house and just _stay_ there forever.

"Come on," said Richie, once his mom took Eddie's things away. "We better get down there before they start the movie without us."

He grabbed onto Eddie's hand, like he often did when they were little, and didn't seem to realize what he had done until they reached the top of the basement stairs. He dropped Eddie's hand, like Eddie's skin was on fire, and immediately segued into daring Eddie to jump down the stairs.

Eddie wisely declined, so _Richie_ ended up jumping down the stairs, after running halfway down, and almost sprained himself like a fucking idiot.

The rest of the group was waiting for them. It felt weird to have all seven of them in a room together, without the PASIV joining them. Beverly and Ben were eating cake on the couch. Stan was telling Mike a story about a bird he found at school yesterday, while Bill was fiddling with the VCR.

"Richie, d-don't you ever r-r- _rewind_ your tapes?" Bill complained.

They were going to watch _Animal House_ , which Richie fucking _loved_. Eddie could think of several other movies he would much rather watch, but Ben, Beverly, and Mike had never seen _Animal House_ , so Richie thought it was his duty to inflict it upon them.

Richie's taste in movies fell into three distinct categories: stupid frat boy comedies (like _Animal House_ ), comedies with hot girls (like _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_ ), and Bang Bang Shoot 'Em Up movies (like _The Godfather_ ). He was pretty fucking predictable.

Eddie was about to sink into a chair when Beverly shook her head at him. "That's Mike's seat. Yours is over _here_." She directed him to the far end of the couch.

"We have _assigned seating_?"

Stan broke off his bird story and smirked. "Guess I finally rubbed off on Richie."

Richie smirked back. "More like—"

" _My mom_ rubbed off on you," Stan finished dryly. "I _know_. Spare me, Richie."

Eddie took his seat on the couch. There was an empty spot between him and Beverly. He hoped Bill would fill it, once the tape finished rewinding, but Bill took a seat by Mike. Then Richie appeared with the remote in one hand and a blanket in the other, and practically shoved himself into the space next to Eddie.

Eddie's throat suddenly felt smaller. This couldn't be good.

There were four of them on the couch—Ben, Beverly, Richie, Eddie—with the blanket spread over them, and it was kind of a tight fit. Richie was _right_ up against Eddie, so that their shoulders were touching, and Eddie wanted to ask if he could sit somewhere else, but that would just make things _weirder_. So he kept his mouth shut and tried to focus on the stupid movie, which was nearly impossible because Richie kept leaning into him every time he laughed. And Richie laughed often.

Eddie didn't need his mother's voice in his head to assure him that sitting in a dark basement, squeezed onto a couch so _close_ to Richie was unspeakably Bad.

_That boy will drag you straight to Hell, Eddie_ , she would probably tell him, but if that was true, then why did the edge of Hell feel so pleasantly warm?

There was clearly something wrong with him. Something he had always _suspected_. And he really must have the weakest lungs of all time, because halfway through the movie, Richie started to _really_ lean into him—like he thought Eddie was a pillow—and Eddie couldn't fucking breathe.

Wheezing, he wriggled out from between Richie and the couch. His end of the blanket slipped to the floor. He was

_(going to hell going to hell)_

aware of six concerned voices saying his name, while that stupid movie still played loudly, but all that was mattered was getting _out_.

"Bathroom," he choked out as he headed for the stairs. "I'm going to the bathroom."

Eddie slammed the basement door behind him. Then he was in the bathroom and sitting on the toilet and clutching his inhaler for dear life as the medicine shot down his throat.

He could breathe a little better, but the _fear_ wouldn't leave him. He was wrong. He was bad. Broken. _Sick_. He had always tried to convince himself it wasn't true. That he could be normal if he just tried hard enough.

"Eddie!"

_Shit_. Of course Richie was outside the door.

Eddie desperately sucked on his inhaler and didn't respond.

"What the _fuck_ , Eddie? Are you using your inhaler right now? How do you get a fucking asthma attack just from sitting on the couch?"

_Go away_ , Eddie thought. _I'm sick, I'm sick, get away from me._

A sudden _thud!_ startled him so that he almost fell off the toilet seat. Did Richie actually _kick_ the door?

"I swear I'm gonna call 9-1-1 if you don't say something, Eddie. I mean, if your lungs can't even handle a fucking movie, then this is serious shit!"

"I'm all right!" Eddie yelled. "Jeez. Just shut the fuck _up_ already, Richie! Can't I use the fucking bathroom?"

Silence.

It took another good five minutes for Eddie's attack to pass. When he checked his reflection in the mirror above the sink, his pupils were dizzyingly huge. His chest ached and his hands felt clammy around his inhaler. Richie was right. What kind of asthma got triggered from sitting on the couch?

He reached for his totem, just to make sure this was _real_. The plastic T-Rex felt solid and reassuring, but it didn't roar.

Eddie wished Bill had brought the PASIV. The dreamworld would have fixed everything, at least for a little while. He could pretend he was healthy. Pretend he was _normal_. But here he was, stuck in cruel reality, trapped inside a body that couldn't breathe properly and made him _feel_ things that were unnatural.

So much for going to Hell. He was already there.

And Richie didn't help matters. It was like he _knew_ about Eddie's problem and did all he could to make it worse. Why did he have to act like he cared so fucking _much_?

When Eddie finally crept out of the bathroom, Richie was nowhere in sight. Mrs. Tozier found him and offered him a slice of leftover birthday cake, which Eddie gratefully accepted. It made it easier to pretend everything was _fine_ when he returned to the basement with cake in his hands.

The moment he reappeared, Bill asked, "What t-t-took you so long, Eddie? Did you f-f-fall in?"

And Stan said, "Really, Bill? Did you just make a joke my dad would make?"

Which created the perfect diversion, since everyone was too busy laughing at Bill to make a fuss over Eddie's well-being. The less fuss, the better. He got _more_ than enough of that from his mother.

It strengthened his resolve to finish out the movie without another asthma attack. They always seemed to get worse when he was upset, so there must be some connection between his lungs and his brain. Was it possible for his body to strain itself when his emotions got worked up? It was the only explanation he could think of for his seemingly random attacks. And in that case, he would have to be careful _not_ to get worked up if he didn't want his lungs going crazy.

His spot on the couch was waiting for him. Richie moved the blanket so Eddie could sit down and for a moment, he was gazing at Eddie with that terrifying expression that seemed eerily similar to how Ben looked sometimes. But as soon as Eddie sat down, the spell was broken. Richie reverted right back to his usual self, cracking jokes at Eddie and teasing him with his Voices and making him _almost_ drop his cake on the floor. It would be annoying if it wasn't so wonderfully normal.

But then Mike shut out the lights and Ben unpaused the movie and Eddie had to fight for control all over again. There he was in the dark with Richie up against him, a blanket spread over them to keep out the March chill, and was it really all so terrible?

_Richie wanted this_ , Eddie reminded himself. _He could have had anything at all in the dreamworld, but he chose THIS_. The thought consoled him a little. It wasn't _Eddie's_ fault that Richie wanted to sit right fucking next to him in the dark like this. Got to give the birthday boy what he wants, right?

The rest of the movie played without incident. _Animal House_ was definitely a Richie sort of movie, full of wild college students having frat parties and peeking into girls' bedrooms and playing pranks and causing trouble in nightclubs. The characters were pretty obsessed with sex, too. Eddie found himself wondering if Richie had ever really Done It with a girl. Richie sure as hell talked like he had, but he talked a lot of shit. If half the things he said were true, then Eddie's mom would be in jail.

Richie could have gotten anything with the PASIV. One of those stupid strip clubs he used to joke about building, along with a ridiculously hot dream girl to have ridiculously good dream sex with. Did he turn it down because he'd already had the real thing? Was he hooking up with girls in the back of the arcade when all their backs were turned? Getting to second base with them under the school bleachers? It was possible. Completely possible. Eddie had no doubt that Richie liked girls—whether his exploits were bullshit or not—and yet... he teased Eddie so much. More than he ever teased anyone else. He put such genuine effort into giving Eddie a good time in the dreamworld. And sometimes, Richie's joker mask would slide off and Eddie would start to glimpse something softer that both thrilled and terrified him.

But maybe it was all just wishful thinking. Maybe Eddie just wanted to believe that Richie was secretly like him, even just a little. That he wasn't the only sick one.

This was soon to become the least of his worries. 


	7. Chapter 7

_April 1990_

Ben was _just_ starting to build their clubhouse in the Barrens when Bill made it all go to hell.

No one blamed him for it, but Bill could feel the silent accusations all the same. It twisted him up in knots and made his stutter come out worse than ever. And there was no more PASIV to smooth out his words and pull the roadblocks off his tongue. No more dreamshare.

It was gone forever.

As soon as the snows had melted and the Barrens became safe, Ben started to seriously design the clubhouse he talked about in January. It took weeks for them all to pool enough money for the supplies, but once they had enough wood, Ben laid the foundation for their house. It had been exciting to watch him work. Whatever dream skills Ben possessed seemed to transfer over to the real world—or maybe the other way around. Either way, Ben was a born architect.

But as the winter cold gave way to the hopeful warmth of spring, Bill's house remained permanently chilled. Once again, Bill felt the icy distance between himself and his parents, while everything outside thawed and bloomed.

Once again, it all became too much.

He threw away the advice Mr. Hanlon gave him and hooked into the PASIV all alone, locking himself in his room with the device. It was the only way he could try to _forget_ the way his family had fallen apart.

The only way he could see Georgie again.

Not the mangled, bleeding Georgie who attacked Eddie, but his _brother_ , exactly as he was before that awful October day. Georgie was always himself when Bill entered the dreamworld alone. He only seemed to turn monstrous when Bill was with his friends, as if Georgie couldn't stand the thought of Bill having fun without him.

So Bill spent hours having fun just with Georgie. He took his brother to carnivals and bought him the latest toys with endless amounts of dream-money. Each time he went under, he set the PASIV's timer a little longer. Each time, it grew harder to wake up.

He stopped caring about the consequences, until they bit him in the ass.

Two days after Ben laid the foundation in the Barrens, Bill set the PASIV for twenty minutes—which gave him a solid four hours with Georgie. Or it would have, if his father—who had finally broken out of his haze and _noticed_ something—hadn't figured out that Bill was acting strange lately. He forced Bill's door open and discovered his son lying in bed, hooked up to a device that was _supposed_ to be buried down in the basement, and all the parental coldness suddenly turned burning-hot with outrage.

Bill's mom wouldn't stop crying afterwards.

His dad boxed up the PASIV and sent it to an old colleague of his, out of Bill's hands forever.

Worst of all was the moment he had to tell his friends they could no longer dream together. Ben could no longer build skyscrapers. Eddie could no longer play baseball. The disappointment _ate_ at Bill each time he thought of all the freedom he could no longer give them. He had been so careless. So _stupid_. It was almost like he had been daring his parents to catch him. _They won't ever know_ , he'd assured himself each time he slid the needle into his arm. _They won't know and they sure as hell won't care_.

But now his parents knew. And at last, after a year and a half of coldness, they _cared_.

If only the price wasn't so fucking high.

"Maybe it's better this way," Stan told him, a week after Bill broke the bad news. "I always felt like dreamshare was too big for us anyway. I mean, how many kids mess around with that stuff? We were playing with fire."

"But we were g-g-getting _good_ at it," said Bill. "We c-could have learned so much m-m-more."

"And then what? I don't think my dad would be too thrilled if I put that on a college application." Stan bit his lip and turned his eyes away, moving toward the sound of birds chirping outside of Bill's window. "My dad wouldn't understand dreamshare. It's a fantasy to him. He wants me to do something _real_."

He pulled his plastic cardinal—his prize from the vending machine all those months ago—and held it out to Bill.

"Guess I won't need this anymore."

Bill had thought the same thing about the plastic turtle that rested in his jeans. Once or twice he'd tried to toss it in the trash, or at least throw it into the cluttered vortex under his bed, but his hand would always pause. And he'd stick the turtle back in his pocket, somehow feeling like it still belonged there.

"H-h-hold on to it anyway," said Bill. "You n-never know."

Stan hesitated, then put his totem away. Bill wanted to believe that Stan also sensed that the totem _belonged_ with him, but it was probably just the fact that Bill had made a suggestion and Stan saw no reason to disobey it. He could tell Stan or Beverly or Eddie or _any_ of them to climb to the roof and jump off it, and his friends would take it as words of wisdom.

Even now, after he had failed them, they would still do it. Why did they continue to follow him?

Even without the PASIV, Georgie's ghost continued to live in his head. He stalked Bill during the night, when his dreams were nothing but vague scraps of jumbled nonsense he only half-remembered in the morning. He tried to throw himself back into building things. It wasn't the same, since his hands were so much clumsier than his mind, but he convinced Ben they should finish the clubhouse. The work kept him from dwelling on the pain lurking in Beverly's face after a bad time with her dad, and knowing she could no longer escape to other worlds. It kept him from thinking how hard it was to have P.E. class with Richie. The baseball unit had started and Eddie was stuck indoors, gazing wistfully out the window and remembering how it felt to hit a ball in his dreams. Richie never mentioned it during class, but Bill could _sense_ the anger and hurt he felt on Eddie's behalf.

The guilt was enough to make Bill sick. All his parents could do was lecture him on the dangers of dreamsharing so young. How he was _lucky_ they caught him. It frustrated him so much, he thought he might explode, and half-wished he would. Maybe it would be enough to knock the stutter out of him.

Instead he took a trip to the Hanlon farm.

Mike's dad listened patiently while Bill broke down on the porch and confessed about dreamshare. Not the _whole_ story—he made it sound like he used the PASIV exclusively alone, to keep Mike out of trouble—but enough to make Mr. Hanlon understand why Georgie's ghost ate at him so badly.

"Sometimes, wh-when I s-saw him in the dreamworld, he was the old G-G-Georgie," said Bill, not caring that his eyes were starting to burn with tears. "But other times, he b-became...a m-m- _monster_. He would accuse me of k-k-killing him. And he was right! I d-did kill him! If I never made him that b-boat, he would still be here!"

Mr. Hanlon laid a firm, solid hand on Bill's back and let him cry it out. "You've got to let him go, Bill. You keep carrying this around and it'll never stop eating you."

"H-h-how do I let him go?"

"You've got to forgive yourself. I left men behind in Vietnam, son. Damn good men. And I kept myself awake at night asking a thousand _what ifs_? If I'd thrown that grenade a little faster or shot a little straighter, maybe some of 'em would still be here. But you can't spend your whole life beating yourself up. You've got to let yourself breathe."

Bill nodded. "Breathe," he repeated, fighting not to trip on his stutter.

Mr. Hanlon's right pocket jingled and suddenly the sun was shining on an old key, once silver-bright but now spotted with rust.

"Promise not to tell your folks and I'll let you drive my truck for a bit."

Driving for the first time was nearly as good as dreamsharing. The fields and outbuildings of the Hanlon farm flew by in an exhilarating whirl, until Bill could _almost_ convince himself that the real world wasn't so terrible after all. That he didn't _need_ to dream in order to escape.

But the real lesson came a week later, when he came home from school and heard the biggest news story to hit Derry in over twenty years.

*

Eddie couldn't switch on the TV or radio without hearing about Robert Gray.

Labeled the most dangerous dream criminal in Northeastern America, Robert Gray had been operating right _there_ in Derry, while Eddie and his friends had been having fun.

It made Eddie sick with revulsion each time he saw the man's face on TV. All this time, Eddie could have been a victim. _Any_ of them could. He kept his totem close at all times, even though the days of dreamshare had come to an end, and assured himself of reality. It was a shitty reality, where creeps preyed on kids' minds just for kicks, but at least he knew where he was.

The news stories never quit. Robert Gray, along with an accomplice identified only as Mrs. Kirsch, had been running a two-part operation. First, they performed an extraction on their target—usually a child—to find out what they feared the most. Once this information was obtained, Gray and his accomplice built a nightmare world to terrorize the victim. When asked why he would do such a thing, Gray told police he was simply "hungry for fear."

It explained the increased reports of insomnia and depression among children in Derry. Gray confessed to torturing at least a dozen kids that Eddie either had classes with, or passed in the halls at school on a regular basis. Eddie couldn't think of their names without horror twisting inside him. He never imagined that anyone could deliberately make the dreamworld ugly. He had seen darkness in the form of Georgie's ghost, of course, but that had come from Bill's grief. Bill didn't try to scare any of them on _purpose_.

A week after the news came out, he was at his locker—because _Eddie_ actually brought his books to school—while Richie was dicking around nearby, trying to distract him. A girl in a plaid blazer walked past and stopped at the drinking fountain. Eddie vaguely knew her as Sarah, a girl in his science class—and one of Robert Gray's victims.

Richie was staring at her. "You know, I almost fucked her brains out a few months ago. I was _this_ fucking close. But then that dream psycho got her and she barely spoke to me again. She definitely would have wanted my dick if Robert Gray hadn't fucked her in the head first."

Eddie slammed his locker shut harder than he meant to. "Seriously, Richie? I'm glad kids getting _tortured_ is making you feel better about yourself."

Richie, for once in his fucking life, had nothing to say. He just stood there like an idiot until Eddie took off, hoping to ditch him. Which was impossible, since they had their next class together, but Eddie still tried to pretend that Richie _wasn't_ following him.

Sarah finished up at the drinking fountain and walked right in front of Eddie. She seemed pale and quiet. _Haunted._ Eddie heard she'd been having trouble sleeping for months. He had also noticed her laughing at Richie's jokes, before Robert Gray got a hold of her. Maybe Richie was full of shit, like he often was, but maybe not. Maybe he _did_ come close to screwing her. Which would be perfectly _normal_ , since Richie was a boy and Sarah was a girl and why the hell shouldn't they fuck?

Eddie had been stupid to wonder if Richie was anything other than normal. If maybe it wouldn't be so _horrible_ if Eddie wasn't the only freak. The only sick one.

He seriously considered heading to the nurse's office, but then his mother would probably find out and whisk him to the hospital for several hours' worth of tests. They wouldn't find a damn thing, unless they looked inside his head. Wouldn't it be fun if his mom found out how ill he _really_ was? She'd probably make him get brain surgery.

In the end, he made it into his English classroom and _of course_ Richie was right behind him and started talking his ear off the moment they sat down.

"—I wasn't trying to be a jerk or anything, Eddie," he was babbling as his backpack thudded to the floor. "I'm just _saying_ , girls don't show you their panties unless they want dick. It would have been a _sure thing_. I could have been fucking Sarah for months if it wasn't for this dream shit, but instead I have to keep settling for your mom—"

Eddie tried to block him out and opened his copy of _To Kill a Mockingbird_.

"Shit, I forgot my book again," said Richie. "Scoot over, Eds."

Richie "forgot his book" so often, Eddie suspected he did it on purpose. And somehow, because the universe hated Eddie, the classroom never seemed to have any extra copies. Before Eddie could even protest, there was this horrible loud _scrape_ as Richie slid his chair aggressively across the linoleum and crashed it into Eddie's desk. A couple of girls giggled. Mrs. Williamson, who had _way_ more patience for Richie's antics than Richie deserved, waited for him to get settled and began reading out loud from Chapter 3.

"Why don't you share with Laura?" Eddie whispered to Richie. He immediately despised the bitter edge to his voice. "Maybe you'll get lucky with her afterwards."

"I wish," Richie sighed. "She fucking hates me."

Eddie was convinced, at this point, that Richie _had_ to be playing some kind of game with him. Why the hell else would he sit way closer to Eddie than necessary? Because he liked to invade his personal space just for the fun of it? Richie was practically leaning into Eddie's shoulder, just like the basement couch all over again. Eddie could _feel_ Richie breathe and it wasn't all cigarette-y like it used to be. He was trying to quit, according to Beverly. She'd been taking her smoke breaks alone for weeks now.

Eddie turned the page and narrowly avoided elbowing Richie. He leaned away

_(don't touch him eddie you'll make him sick)_

and forced himself to focus on Mrs. Williamson's voice. He could do this. It was only one class period. One fucking class period and he wouldn't have to put up with Richie for the rest of the day.

He ended up staring across the room at Kevin, who saw the school counselor once a week. He'd been another of Robert Gray's victims. Another kid caught in a nightmare. It could have happened to any of them so easily. Could have happened to _Eddie_.

He felt around in his pocket until his fingers gripped his plastic T-Rex. What if it _did_ already happen and he didn't even know it?

Who knew how many dream criminals were secretly lurking around Derry? There could be others. Somebody could have drugged Eddie ages ago, before he knew about extraction or totems, and gotten inside his head. Infected him somehow. Maybe _that_ was why he could only love Beverly like a sister. Why Bill's smile made him flush sometimes for absolutely no reason. Why Richie—

The attack caught him before he even knew it was coming. Like an elephant came and sat on his chest, while something inside his brain short-circuited until he couldn't think straight, couldn't breathe, _I've been fucked in the head, the dream criminals got me, I've been fucked in the—_

"Eddie!"

Suddenly his fanny pack was unzipped and his inhaler was in his mouth, medicine shooting down his throat.

Richie held the inhaler. His arm was around Eddie and he sounded as scared as Eddie felt when he urged him to _Breathe, Eddie, It's okay, Eddie, Asthma's such a bitch—sorry, Mrs. W!_

The weight on Eddie's chest grew lighter. He became aware that the entire class was staring at him, like they'd never seen a kid with fucking asthma before. Everything seemed confused, still. Sort of _dizzy_. He let Richie babble at him and focused on breathing.

"I think you should see the nurse, Eddie," said Mrs. Williamson.

"I'll take him!" Richie volunteered, shooting out of his seat like a rocket.

His grip was surprisingly gentle when he took Eddie by the arm and led him out of the classroom. Whispers erupted the moment Eddie left his seat and they followed him out the door. Eddie couldn't make out the words, but he imagined what his classmates must be saying about him. What kind of _spaz_ had a major asthma attack just from sitting around reading a book?

"I can't go to the nurse!" said Eddie. The words burst out of him in a panic and he jerked his arm out of Richie's grasp.

"Why not?" demanded Richie. His words seemed to bounce off the lockers in the deserted hallway.

"The nurse will tell my mom, and then my mom will have me tested for all kinds of shit, and she'll probably keep me home from school and make me take _twice_ as much medicine as I normally do, and—I don't know—maybe try to sue the fucking school for being a health hazard or some bullshit. I can't go to the nurse, Richie. Not today. I just _can't_."

"Well, fuck going back to class! We have a hall pass and there's no fucking way I'm missing the chance to skip English and get away with it."

Eddie wondered how the hell Richie had a solid B in that class. How he managed to get pretty decent grades in _every_ class. He must be blackmailing all his teachers.

"Where could we go besides the nurse's office?" Eddie demanded.

Richie thought for a moment, tapping the hall pass restlessly against his leg.

"We'll go sit outside by the front door! If anyone asks what we're doing, you just tell them you're waiting for your mom to pick you up!"

"And if that person sees me around school later on?"

"You felt better and decided to stay."

"I swear if I get detention for this, my mom is going to hire a hitman to put a bullet between your eyes."

"After all the good times I've given her? Yeah, right."

They ran into Eddie's math teacher on their way to the front entrance, so Eddie clutched his inhaler and tried to look as sick as possible. Not that anyone would ever doubt him. Much to his embarrassment, he realized the whole fucking school probably knew he was always one step away from an ER visit.

_My son is a very delicate boy,_ his mother always told people, practically bragging about it, like she was _daring_ someone to question her.

Eddie's grip tightened around his inhaler.

He hated being delicate. Hated being different.

But it was refreshing to sit outside with Richie on the front steps, listening to him joke around. It reminded him of all the times Eddie had to stay home from school—usually because his mother was just being paranoid—and Richie called him up or skipped class to go see him.

And now here was Richie again, sacrificing his time (not that he ever spent it wisely in the first place) to try and cheer up Eddie.

"Why'd you quit smoking?" Eddie blurted out, the moment Richie fell silent.

The question seemed to catch Richie off guard. He just stared at Eddie through his big ridiculous glasses, then glanced away. "It got boring. Why did _you_ have an asthma attack in the middle of class?"

"Because I have asthma, you dick."

"I know, but how did it happen during _class_? Not just any class, but the most boring class imaginable? Isn't asthma supposed to act up when you're breathing too hard and shit?"

So Richie had noticed it too. How Eddie's asthma always seemed to bother him at the wrong times.

_Just listen to him!_ his mother shrieked at Eddie's doctor, the day she bullied him into writing a note to keep Eddie out of P.E. _My son has only taken five steps into your office and he sounds like an overheated engine! Does that sound like a little boy who can endure the strain of physical education? DOES IT?_

Eddie remembered that day vividly. His mother had been red-faced, yelling at the doctor until he finally admitted that Eddie wasn't well enough for any sort of exercise. It had been humiliating. Eddie sat there on the examination table, breathing hard, wishing more than anything that he could simply _disappear_. He always felt that way when his mother shouted, especially at his doctors, who she _always_ nagged until they finally broke down. And whenever Eddie sat there in a doctor's office feeling upset and humiliated and longing to disappear, his lungs betrayed him and he needed his inhaler, much to his mother's satisfaction.

Like it gave her an excuse to prove people wrong. _You see?_ she was probably thinking. _I told you he's sick! I TOLD YOU! Now write that prescription! Sign this note! Run just ONE more test on him! I don't care if you found nothing during the last FIVE HUNDRED!_

But that wasn't fair. Eddie's mother took care of him. She wanted what was _best_ for him in order to keep him

_(imprisoned)_

safe.

Didn't she?

"It has to be asthma," he told Richie. "Otherwise my medicine wouldn't work so well. But maybe asthma gets triggered by different things! Maybe it's not just walking or running! Like when I'm really worried or upset, I could be breathing harder, and that's when the attack happens. Maybe the more stressed you get, the harder you breathe?"

"So you got upset in English class?" said Richie. He was watching Eddie carefully, practically X-raying him. "By _what?_ "

"I was thinking about all that Robert Gray shit. How it could have happened to any of us. I guess I got really freaked out."

"You scared the shit out of me," said Richie.

He sounded so unlike himself—so completely honest and unlayered—that Eddie wondered if this was one of his Voices. He braced himself for a punchline that never came. There was only Richie sitting next to him, glancing away the moment Eddie met his eyes.

He ripped off his glasses and scrubbed the lenses with his shirt, then said, "We better get our backpacks. My mom will be fucking pissed if she has to replace all my shit."

Eddie let him change the subject, since dwelling on it would lead to overanalyzing, and overanalyzing usually added more pressure on his chest.

They made it back to English barely a minute before the end of class.

He didn't see Richie for the rest of the day.

*

On Wednesday nights, Eddie always taped _Doogie Howser, M.D._ He had to tape it because it came on at nine and according to his mother, if he wasn't _in bed_ by nine, he could seriously jeopardize his health.

So he taped his show on Wednesday, right before bed, and watched it on Saturday morning, before his mother took over the TV. Eddie liked _Doogie Howser_ because the show was about this boy genius who became a doctor when he was just a kid. It made Eddie wish _he_ could be a teen doctor too. If he had a medical degree, he wouldn't have to listen to his mother anymore. _He_ could decide if he was well enough to play games and sports with the other kids.

On Saturday, he parked himself in front of the TV with a bowl of plain Cheerios (one of the only cereals reluctantly approved by his mother) and got ten minutes into his show when a shadow loomed over the TV.

"Eddie." Sonia Kaspbrak had never seemed more like a mountain that Eddie couldn't pass. "Will you pause that, please? I need to talk to you."

His mind immediately jumped to perilous conclusions. Did one of his doctors contact her? Did he have some terrible disease?

The moment he paused the TV, his mother pulled him into one of her overly-warm, suffocating hugs, which only increased his worry. Then she started crying and launched into a long, blubbering speech about how Eddie's safety was the most important thing in the world. And in light of the recent dream crimes, Derry was no longer safe. She always _knew_ dreamshare was unnatural! And if anybody broke into her little boy's mind, she would simply go to pieces.

"We'll go to New York," she said, squeezing Eddie tightly against her chest. "They're much more vigilant about dream crime in New York. It's better researched over there. And I'll finally have you homeschooled, like I should have done years ago!"

Mostly Eddie was stunned and confused. But somewhere underneath the shock, a horrifying image took shape in his mind: a New York apartment rising high like a tower, with Eddie in the very top room, trapped forever like Rapunzel.

He squirmed in his mother's grasp, tears of his own leaking from his eyes. "Ma, what are you saying? We can't leave!"

She released him at long last and Eddie gasped for air. Sonia produced the spare inhaler she kept in her pocket and gave it to Eddie, urging him to _breathe, sweetie, it will be all right_.

He had never found it harder to breathe. Every time he tried to steady himself, he felt like the house was going to turn upside-down.

"New York has better doctors, too," said Sonia. "You _know_ half the ones here in Derry are practically quacks. Wouldn't you like to get well, Eddie?"

"Not if I have to leave my friends!"

"Your _friends?_ Like that awful Denbrough boy? I've heard _all_ about his escapades and the sooner you're away from him, the better!"

And just like that, all the stability in Eddie's life (which was shaky to begin with), completely crumbled. For the next few weeks he begged and pleaded with his mother, but she remained firm on her decision to leave Derry. A bleak future was laid out before him: endless hours trapped in an apartment, alone without friends.

Everyone took it hard when he broke the news. In the final week before the move, Eddie made time for each of his friends, despite his mother's tearful protests. He read Bill's latest story and built a city with Ben's Lego bricks. He helped Stan look for rare birds and helped Mike feed the new lambs on his farm. He listened to music with Beverly in the safety of their clubhouse, where her dad couldn't find her.

He spent hours at Richie's house and didn't want to leave.

Richie, in his typical way, seemed determined to make the move as difficult as possible. When they were with the rest of their friends, he either teased Eddie twice as much as usual, or got weirdly quiet. The quiet moments were worse. Eddie knew how to deal with the teasing—he'd been putting up with that shit for years—but quiet Richie was a rare and incredibly strange phenomenon that made Eddie nervous.

Things were better when it was just the two of them. Richie was always at his most outrageous when he had an audience. Alone in his room or his basement, with only Eddie for company, he didn't seem as compelled to put on a performance. He still got quiet, though, when it was just them. It reminded Eddie of the early days of dreamshare, when his six friends would sit unconscious in Bill's garage while Eddie played lookout. He used to watch Richie sleep because it gave him the opportunity to try and figure him out. Now his days with Richie were numbered. His friends would call and write to him, of course, but he doubted all seven of them would ever be together again.

He doubted he would ever discover what lay under Richie's numerous masks.

They all came to see him off on Moving Day. His mother tried to forbid it, even going as far as threatening to call the police, but Eddie stared her down and insisted on seeing his friends one last time.

For once, Bill didn't stutter when he told Eddie goodbye. He hugged Eddie and then Beverly followed with tears in her eyes. Then Ben and Mike and Stan and finally Richie, who hugged him so hard Eddie swore one of his ribs got cracked.

"I can't believe your mom is leaving me," Richie said. "After all the times I snuck over here at midnight and plowed her in the backseat of her car—"

"Shut up!" said Eddie, trying to shove him away, though he couldn't help laughing.

Richie hugged him again and another of Eddie's ribs probably went _crack!_

"Tell your mom I'll always fucking love her, okay? I know it's not socially acceptable and shit, but fuck it. We really had something special and I want her to know that."

Richie wasn't laughing when he released Eddie. Not that Eddie got a chance to study his face, because Richie pulled away really fast and went to pester Stan, keeping his back to Eddie the whole time. But Eddie _knew_ he hadn't laughed one bit at his own joke.

It was just another mask Richie wore.

And Eddie wasn't sure he wanted to know what lay behind this one.

*

Three weeks after Eddie moved to New York, he found out Bill was also leaving Derry. He wasn't surprised, given how upset his parents were after the PASIV disaster. The taint of Robert Gray only made things worse.

Beverly left to go live with her aunt a month after that. There had been an incident with her dad, according to Ben, though he kept quiet on the details. Eddie knew better than to pry.

They all kept their promises about staying in touch, at least for as long as fate (with some heavy collaboration from Eddie's mother) allowed it. The first time Richie called the apartment, he did his British Guy voice and pretended to be a phone solicitor selling "male enhancement" pills. Eddie laughed so hard, his mother thought he was dying and wanted to rush him to the hospital. This only made Eddie laugh harder. It was the first time he had really felt glad since the move.

Being homeschooled was every bit as boring as he expected. New York wasn't so bad, from what he could see of it. They had an apartment in Queens, up on the fifth floor of a brownstone building, and he mainly saw the city from a distance. His days consisted of pills, vitamins, and schoolbooks, and when summer arrived it was pills, vitamins, and shitty daytime TV. He wasn't allowed to go _anywhere_ on his own. The whole summer he was babysat by Mrs. Duncan from the fourth floor, who worked part-time as a nurse and full-time as a pain in the ass.

If it wasn't for his friends back in Derry, he would have lost his mind. No matter how busy they were, they all checked up on him. Eddie had a whole stack of stories and drawings he received regularly from Bill, and another stack of nature photos from Stan. Richie never sent anything, but he _did_ give the Kaspbraks a high phone bill every month. Each time he called, he either opened with one of his Voices or an inquiry about Eddie's mom, like, _How's Mrs. K and her Double D's?_ or _Does your mom ever mention how much she misses my dick?_ Eddie always threatened to hang up on him, but he never actually did it. Those phone calls were almost as good as a dream.

When school began in the fall, everyone called less often, except for Richie, who used the school phone every chance he got and bragged about the detentions he earned as a result. He always had news to share. One Saturday he spent a whole hour detailing the plot (complete with bad impressions) of _Goodfellas_ , the new mobster movie with Robert De Niro. Richie's dad agreed to go see it with him, as long as he promised to never tell his mother.

But he didn't always share things with Eddie.

Eddie had to find out from _Stan_ that Richie got to third base with Cindy Frederickson on Halloween. _Supposedly_. Stan wanted to be skeptical, but several people around school swore it was the truth.

And Richie never said a word about it.

Eddie vaguely remembered Cindy. She was in his math class last year, blonde and kind of chatty.

And didn't she have asthma?

Next time Richie called, Eddie tried to bring it up. But every time he said something like, _So you never told me how Halloween went_ or _Have you done anything new lately?_ Richie refused to take the bait and launched into a joke instead.

Eddie eventually gave up. He didn't know why he wanted to hear it from Richie in the first place. In order to hear him deny it? _Fuck no, Eddie, I'd never have sex with a girl. Except your mom, of course, but she's more of a rhino than a girl, am I right?_

God, Eddie was so fucking stupid.

He shoved the whole thing out of his mind and measured the passing months by the contents in his pill bottles. The letters from his friends eventually stopped coming. The phone never rang.

"You need to cut ties with Derry," his mother said when Eddie confronted her. "I should have put a stop to those friends of yours months ago. How can you ever expect to get well if you refuse to let them go?"

Eddie tried using the phone down in the lobby behind his mother's back, but it wasn't the same, and he never got to talk to his friends as long as he liked. Eventually his mother found out and put a stop to that too.

His imprisonment in the tower was complete, but perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps it was what he deserved.

_Don't you want to get well, Eddie?_

He did. Oh yes, he definitely did.

Eddie spent the rest of 1990 and the majority of 1991 in loneliness, but he told himself it was a good loneliness. The longer he went without hearing Richie's voice, the easier it was to forget his illness (not the one in his lungs, but the one in his mind, he one he could never name). By the time 1991 came to a close, all contact with his friends had dwindled down to nothing.

He wouldn't see any of them again for a long, long time, except in his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that’s it. (For now.) 
> 
> I started this story at the end of July, and finished it in October. It was mainly a writing exercise for me, which is why the plot is pretty low-key and not really as exciting as it could have been. Looking back, I wish I had introduced the Robert Gray (a.k.a Pennywise) stuff earlier, and I have mixed feelings about Eddie moving to New York, but I decided to leave the plot as it is. 
> 
> These last few months, I’ve been debating on whether or not I want to do a sequel. In case I never do, here are a couple of ideas I had in mind for continuing the story:
> 
> Idea #1: About twenty years or so have passed. Bill and Mike are a dreamshare duo, running extraction jobs. Tom Rogan asks them to infiltrate Beverly’s dreams so he can find out if she’s cheating on him. Bill gets all the Losers back together and they decide to rescue Beverly from her shitty relationship with Tom by planting an idea in Tom’s subconscious.
> 
> Idea #2: A few years have passed and Eddie is in college in New York. Stan attends the same college and the two of them run into each other. The Losers all get back together in Derry during summer vacation. Bill, now legally an adult and living on his own, bought himself a new PASIV and they all dreamshare in Ben’s clubhouse. 
> 
> Both ideas involve the Losers helping Bill finally make peace with Georgie. And both involve Eddie trying to find out if his mom performed inception on him when they moved to New York, by planting an idea in his head to make him forget about his friends. 
> 
> I’m currently taking a break from writing new fanfiction, so I have no idea if I’ll ever get around to writing any of this, but those are the thoughts I have in mind. Thank you to everyone who left kudos and commented on the story. Your love is appreciated!


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